The novel and movie character, created by the brilliant American writer Patricia Highsmith, now returns through the Netflix miniseries. “Mr Ripley's Talent” around 1955, she had already made a name for herself and Hitchock enhanced it by filming “Strangers on a Train” with a script by Raymond Chandler.
Highsmith wrote four other novels based on Ripley and some also made it to the cinema with the titles “The American Friend” (1977) by Wim Wenders with Dennis Hooper in the lead role and “Ripley's Game’ (2002) by Liliana Cavani with John Malkovich. Graham Greene defined: “Highsmith created an original, closed, irrational, oppressive world, where we enter it with a personal feeling of danger and almost in spite of ourselves, because we are faced with a pleasure mixed with chills.” “Yes, my characters are psychopaths,” Highsmith accepted.