Catwoman

Selina Kyle is Max Shreck's timid, overlooked secretary. One night she finds in the files that the power plant Shreck wants to build will drain Gotham's energy. Shreck pushes her out of his office window. In the snow below, alley cats gather around her, and Selina wakes up a different person.

At home she trashes her pink apartment, sews a black catsuit and becomes Catwoman. She hits one of Shreck's stores, fights Batman and teams up with the Penguin to frame him. At the same time she starts a romance with Bruce Wayne, not knowing he's the man she's been clawing at night.

The alliance with the Penguin ends when he kills the Ice Princess and tries to kill Selina too. At a masquerade ball, Bruce and Selina dance and, through a repeated line, figure out each other's identity.

At the end, Selina goes after Shreck. He shoots her several times, and she stays standing, saying she still has two lives left. She kisses Shreck while holding a live power cable, and the blast kills him. Batman finds only Shreck's body. Days later, Bruce sees Selina's silhouette in an alley but finds only a cat. In the final shot, Catwoman looks up at the Bat-Signal.

In Nolan's trilogy, Selina is a high-end thief and con artist. Disguised as a maid at Wayne Manor, she steals Bruce's fingerprints for businessman John Daggett. In return she wants a program that erases anyone's criminal record, so she can start over.

Daggett double-crosses her, and the prints end up with Bane. Cornered, she leads Batman into a trap in the sewers, where Bane beats him. When Bane takes over Gotham, Selina sees up close the chaos she helped create.

When Bruce returns to Gotham, he finds Selina and offers her the program she wanted in exchange for help. She agrees but thinks about running before the battle. In the final fight she shows up just in time and kills Bane with the Batpod's cannons.

After the bomb explodes far from the city, everyone thinks Batman is dead. In the closing sequence, Alfred sees Bruce at a café in Florence, sitting with Selina.

In Matt Reeves's universe, Selina works as a waitress at the Penguin's club and steals on the side. Her friend and roommate, Annika, disappears after showing up in photos with the dead mayor. Batman asks for Selina's help, and she goes into the club wearing camera contact lenses.

The two grow closer as they follow the Riddler's trail through the city's corruption. Selina reveals that crime boss Carmine Falcone is her father, who never acknowledged her, and learns he's the one who killed Annika.

Selina goes to kill Falcone on a rooftop, but Batman talks her down, and Gordon arrests the mobster. Moments later, a Riddler sniper shot kills Falcone. When the Riddler's followers attack the new mayor's event, Selina comes back and saves Batman from one of the attackers.

At the end, she asks Batman to leave with her, because she thinks Gotham can't be saved. He stays. They ride together to the edge of the city, then go their separate ways.

Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, she debuted as "the Cat" in Batman #1 in 1940. Kane said he was inspired by Jean Harlow, Hedy Lamarr and his cousin Ruth Steele. In Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, Selina turns to burglary to escape life on the streets of Gotham's East End. On 1960s TV she was played by Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt.