American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis

Major characters

• Patrick Bateman – the central narrator and villainous protagonist of the novel.
• Evelyn Richards – Bateman's supposed fiancée.
• Timothy Price – Bateman's best friend and colleague. Later appears as a teenager in Ellis's novel The Informers.
• Paul Owen – Bateman's colleague who is later murdered by Bateman.
• Jean – Bateman's secretary, whom Bateman refers to as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me".
• Luis Carruthers – a closeted homosexual co-worker who is attracted to Bateman, something that disgusts the latter.
• Courtney Lawrence – Luis' fiancée who is having an affair with Bateman.
• Craig McDermott – Bateman's colleague, part of a social foursome alongside Bateman, Timothy Price and David Van Patten.
• David Van Patten – Bateman's colleague, also part of Bateman's main social group.

Minor characters

• "Christie" – a prostitute, employed and badly abused by Bateman on multiple occasions before he eventually murders her in a grisly fashion. Bateman gives her this name; her real one is never revealed.
• Elizabeth – a dinner date of Bateman's, drugged and coerced into having sex with "Christie" before being violently murdered.
• Marcus Halberstam – Bateman's colleague; Paul Owen repeatedly mistakes Bateman for Marcus.
• Donald Kimball – private detective hired to investigate Paul Owen's disappearance.
• Harold Carnes – Bateman’s lawyer who misidentifies him then refuses to believe Bateman’s confession at the climax of the novel.
• Alison Poole – sexually and physically assaulted by Bateman; created by Ellis's friend Jay McInerney in his novel Story of My Life[21] and based on McInerney's former girlfriend Rielle Hunter, reappears as a main character in Ellis's later novel Glamorama, where she is involved with the lead character, Victor Ward.
• Sean Bateman – younger brother of Patrick Bateman and also the lead character of The Rules of Attraction.
• Paul Denton – friend of Paul Owen, who also appears in The Rules of Attraction where he is possibly romantically involved with Patrick's brother Sean.
• Christopher Armstrong – Bateman's colleague at Pierce & Pierce.
• Bethany – an old girlfriend of Patrick's whom, after a date, he tortures and subsequently murders.
• Stash – Evelyn's friend, who is HIV positive.
• Vanden – Evelyn's friend from the East Village who claims to attend Camden College, the main setting of The Rules of Attraction.
• Al – a homeless man whom Bateman blinds and disfigures with a knife.
• Tom Cruise – lives in the same apartment building as Bateman, in the penthouse.
• Bono – the leader singer of Irish rock band U2. Appears in a chapter in which Bateman and his colleagues attend a U2 concert.
• Patty Winters – the host of a talk show which Bateman frequently views. As the novel progresses the subject of her programs become more and more absurd, implied to be no more than a figment of Bateman's imagination.