Director Alex Gibney looks back on a career of profiling liars and shady characters, from Elizabeth Holmes to Lance Armstrong, and crowns the most despicable

For close to 40 years, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney has made movies about some of the most complex and controversial figures of the last century.

He's examined the maddening drive of Steve Jobs ("Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), the bald-faced lies of people like Lance Armstrong ("The Armstrong Lie") and Julian Assange ("We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks"), and even the mind games done by the head of Scientology, David Miscavige ("Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief").

Now you can add to the list disgraced Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes, the subject of his latest documentary, "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley."

So what attracts Gibney to do movies on people like these?

"Abuse of power," Gibney told Business Insider. "The way that power gets abused is sometimes appealing to people's sense of idealism. Then that allows a kind of latitude we otherwise wouldn't give them. They blind us."

Here Gibney looks back on some of the shady people he's made movies about over the years, and says who is the most despicable: