When members of the Russian Communist Party complain that in his new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford is dogged by an evil KGB agent played by Cate Blanchett, it really makes you think. What it makes you think mostly is: who on earth complains about being portrayed by Cate Blanchett?

One problem for Hollywood is that it is running out of villainous stereotypes. Native Americans, the staple of the western? Politically incorrect. The inscrutable Chinese? Tricky when we are trying to woo China into becoming a liberal democracy. An inscrutable Japanese? That was easier in the days before Japanese corporations owned half the studios in Hollywood. When the French fell into the frame (in The Matrix Reloaded and Mission Impossible and Oceans 12), Paris Match bridled: “A smoker, not very clean, vain, cowardly and unfaithful, the Frenchman has come to embody the depraved morals of old Europe as evoked by George Bush.” Iranians moaned at how Ancient Persians were depicted in 300, a movie about the Battle of Thermopylae.

But did the Romans whine when they were portrayed as brutes in Spartacus? No. Nor, more significantly, did the British actors - Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov - who played all those icy Roman senators. Why not?

Because the British know that villainy is where the artistic gold lies. Anthony Hopkins was voted all-time screen baddie by the American Film Institute for his role as Hannibal Lecter, leading a legion of villains such as Alan Rickman, Steven Berkoff, Christopher Lee, David Bowie (yes, playing Pontius Pilate) and even Richard E. Grant - men with such toffish British accents you wonder why Labour election campaigners in Crewe aren't stalking them. Why do they crave such roles? “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture,” said Hitchcock, who knew who usually stole the cinematic glory.

When Russians twig that, they'll be a threat not just to archaeologists but to Hollywood itself.