The 50 best movie performances of the 21st century so far, ranked

Culture Staff and Louis ChiltonSun, August 23, 2026 at 5:00 AM UTC

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How on earth do you condense 26 years of cinema into just 50 performances? It can’t be done, of course – though The Independent’s culture desk have taken their best stab at it.

In whittling down a list of the best performances of the 21st century, we enforced a few rules: firstly, that each actor could only appear on this once. Every performance had to have been in a feature-length film that premiered between 1 January, 2000 and the present day.

Our ranking has attempted to take into account a number of factors, including the charisma on show, emotional range, logistical difficulty, and in many cases the cultural impact – any factor by which a performance might be deemed “great”.

We have also tried to feature a balance of familiar characters and lesser-known gems, and a diverse mix of genres. Some areas of cinema are better represented than others; most are performances in the English language. There are many, many worthy omissions, inevitably, and although this ranking was assembled by committee, it is a matter of subjective taste, as all such rankings are.

With all this in mind, here are The Independent’s picks for the 50 best movie performances of the 21st century...

50. Natalie Portman in Vox Lux (2018)

Natalie Portman in 'Vox Lux' (Neon)

Years before Brady Corbet earned his Best Picture nomination for The Brutalist, he released an equally damning portrait of America in the form of Vox Lux. It saw him place all of the nation’s demons inside one woman: a pop star called Celeste. Having survived a school shooting as a teenager, she sang a eulogy at the memorial, which was transformed first into a cathartic release, then a kind of marketable therapy. Natalie Portman played her as feral, mighty, spiteful and manipulative, sharpening every one of her jagged corners. Celeste’s path of carnage leads, eventually, to a live concert, in which the actor weaponises every inch of her celebrity. She commands the stage, making us believe that this crowd of mostly young, broken teens, would come to her for some healing in an unredeemable world. Clarisse Loughrey

49. Russell Crowe in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Russell Crowe in 'Master and Commander' (Fox)

Russell Crowe won his Oscar for Gladiator, with a performance that capitalised on many of his best qualities at the time: tautness, aggression; sincerity. Three years later, as naval officer Jack Aubrey in Peter Weir’s Master and Commander, he may have been even better. The film’s reputation as an impeccably sturdy “dad movie” has only grown over the past two decades – “dad cinema” being a slightly (if only slightly) reductive descriptor for this all-male film about men and cannons and boats. Crowe holds scenes down with a gravitas that could anchor a cruise liner, but there’s more to his Aubrey than just naval bluster and concerned, quasi-Napoleonic stares. It’s a midpoint, of sorts: in flashes, there’s a quiet playfulness to Crowe’s performance, presaging, in a way, the sort of actor he would one day become, once he let that playfulness take the wheel, for both better and worse. Louis Chilton

48. Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde (2001)

Reese Witherspoon in ‘Legally Blonde’ (MGM)

Reese Witherspoon shines brighter than the bulbs of an LA tanning bed as the super-girly sorority sister turned lawyer Elle Woods. The hair flips, swinging hips, perturbed nose scrunches and squeaky screams of joy are all inarguably fun (and oft recreated) quirks of the character. But it's Witherspoon’s earnestness and foot-stomping determination that gives the film the added bite – and an irresistible mix of wit and charm that sees us through the courtroom to graduation day. What, like it’s hard? Lydia Spencer-Elliott

47. Lupita Nyong’o in Us (2019)

Lupita Nyong'o in 'Us' (Universal Pictures)

Lupita Nyong’o is on double duty in Jordan Peele’s horror, playing young mum Adelaide andRed, the doppelganger that has haunted her since childhood. As the former, she’s convincingly harried, but it’s her performance as Red that is utterly indelible, as she takes on an unsettling physicality and harrowing rasp of a voice. The film’s ultimate twist relies upon the tiny subtleties in her performance – Peele’s big reveal simply wouldn’t work without her – and watching these two very different characters face off is testament to Nyong’o’s staggering range. Katie Rosseinsky

46. James Gandolfini in Enough Said (2013)

James Gandolfini in ‘Enough Said’ (Searchlight Pictures)

Gandolfini’s co-star in Nicole Holofcener’s heartbreakingly honest sad-com, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, has spoken of his insecurity on the set of this movie, and his struggle with playing against brutish Sopranos type. The tragedy of all of this is that Gandolfini, who died in the summer of 2013, never got to see Enough Said, or the acclaim for his work in it. He plays a regular dude, someone sweet and well-intentioned but deeply flawed, who meets a similarly flawed woman (Louis-Dreyfus) who’s also single in middle age and struggling to adapt to an empty nest. Gandolfini is lovely here, sexy in a scruffy way, bitter in a way that makes you want to give him a hug rather than push him away. Adam White

45. Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Gene Hackman in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' (Buena Vista Pictures)

Director Wes Anderson and his writing partner Owen Wilson wrote the role of idiosyncratic patriarch Royal Tenenbaum specifically with Gene Hackman in mind. And yet, the actor was reluctant to play the role; doing so would require him to adhere to a total stranger’s perception of him. To him, that felt inauthentic, and Hackman was never inauthentic. In the end, that reluctance only seemed to make the late star’s performance in this winsome fable of familial dysfunction more affecting. Royal barges back into the lives of his estranged wife and three depressed children on the presumption that all past misdeeds will be forgiven. After all, he’s brilliant, is he not? He’s a winking renegade who harnesses all the natural command Hackman poured into the likes of The French Connection or The Conversation. That charm is what makes the honest aspects of his character – his jealousy, cruelty, scorn, and anger – feel ultimately as much of a betrayal to the audience as well as his family. CL

44. Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Emily Blunt in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (20th Century Fox)

No one has embodied an icy British fashion posho on screen more realistically than Emily Blunt – trust me, I’ve worked with plenty of real ones. As Emily Charlton, the uppity, furiously competent first assistant to Meryl Streep’s editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly, Blunt is utterly irresistible. Every eye roll, bitchy raised eyebrow, and muttered aside (“I love my job, I love my job…”) of hers is expertly calibrated. Stealing scenes from a veteran like Streep as a twenty-something rookie is no mean feat, which only makes Blunt’s fizzily acerbic comic turn all the more impressive. KR

43. Joaquin Phoenix in You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Joaquin Phoenix in 'You Were Never Really Here' (StudioCanal)

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, for which Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor at Cannes, is a chilling exercise in psychological claustrophobia. There’s no escape from Phoenix’s Joe, a private contractor hired for the rescue of trafficked girls, who suffers from PTSD as a result of his combat experience and abusive childhood. This is a film of violence, and Phoenix has Joe wielding his weapon of choice, a household hammer, not with the expected sense of vicious release, but with a dutiful submission to destiny: to inflict the violence that was inflicted upon himself. Phoenix’s gift is that he can create a character that is at once intimate and elusive. Sometimes you can catch sight of the part of Joe who is trapped back in childhood, in the soulful, frightened look in his eye. CL

42. Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Oscar Isaac in 'Inside Llewyn Davis' (CBS/StudioCanal)

When all is said and done, it’ll be surprising if Llewlyn Davis – a sofa-surfing, jobbing musician whose big breaks keep evading him – isn’t the role that defines Oscar Isaac’s career. Isaac is utterly credible as a talented Greenwich Village folk singer, which is no mean feat given he’s actually playing guitar and singing his own vocal parts. Llewyn is far from one of the Coen brothers’ most eccentric characters, but Isaac’s beautifully melancholic character work makes him one of their most fully formed. You’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such an asshole – but it’s to Isaac’s credit, you still root for the guy. Jacob Stolworthy

41. Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Judi Dench in ‘Notes on a Scandal’ (Fox Searchlight)

The words “Dame Judi Dench” bring to mind many roles, such as that of a disdainful dowager (Lady Bracknell, Lady Catherine de Bourgh), MI6 spymaster (M in the James Bond franchise) or literal queen (Elizabeth I and Victoria). Less obvious, though no less potent, is her dark, twisted turn as an embittered and manipulative teacher in Richard Eyre’s 2006 film Notes on a Scandal. Her portrayal of Barbara Covett, an acerbic, acid-tongued but achingly lonely woman who develops an unhealthy fascination with the new art teacher (Cate Blanchett), is deeply unsettling. Not least because it plays so against type – we expect Dench to be haughty and dignified, not bristling with piss and vinegar! Here is a transformation that gets under your skin. Helen Coffey

40. Delroy Lindo in Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Delroy Lindo as Paul in 'Da 5 Bloods' (David Lee/Netflix)

A great, too often undersung actor, Delroy Lindo has done some of his best work with Spike Lee, in films such as Crooklyn (1994)and Clockers (1995). His finest turn may well be in Lee’s 2020 movie Da 5 Bloods, playing a veteran who returns to Vietnam with his old platoon-mates to recover buried gold. Lindo is completely magnetic as Paul, a volatile, troubled, and embittered man unable to escape the trauma of war. That the Oscars failed to nominate him was correctly interpreted as an egregious snub. LC

39. Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago (2002)

Catherine Zeta Jones in 'Chicago' (Miramax)

What’s the good kind of scenery chewing? It’s probably this – a ravenous, blood-oozing-out-of-your-expensive-steak performance and one of the most deserved Oscar wins of the 21st century to date. Playing a spectacularly bobbed murderess, Zeta-Jones is all back bends, ferocious fly kicks, and unambiguous, eyelash-fluttering desperation. She’s never had a role quite so thrilling since, which feels not only cruel but also downright stupid. AW

38. Emma Stone in Poor Things (2023)

Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in 'Poor Things' (Searchlight)

When Emma Stone emerged – merrily unfiltered and gangly limbed – as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things in 2024, both viewers and critics alike applauded her performance as an adult woman with the mind of an infant to be unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Through toddler-esque face gymnastics, finely honed slapstick and frenetic comedic timing, Stone birthed Baxter as a bawdy bundle of an almost-woman, who – in voluminous mutton sleeves and bloomers – explored the world with shameless liberty and radical curiosity, eschewing the patriarchy, as well as her trousers. LSE

37. Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme (2025)

King Pong: Timothee Chalamet in 'Marty Supreme' (A24)

Between the bonkers press tour and the orange latex outfits, it is easy to forget that at the centre of the 2025 Marty Supreme hype was a career-best performance from Timothée Chalamet. The film itself, which follows a young man’s mission to become the world table tennis champion in the 1950s, is a masterclass in ratcheting up the tension, notch by notch, until pure adrenaline is ping-ponging through your veins. Amid it all there’s Chalamet playing the ultimate egotistical anti-hero, who is as charming as he is narcissistic. The actor masterfully walks the tightrope of a love-hate relationship with his audience. Sure, he’s a douchebag but you can’t help but gasp at the sheer, audacious brio of the man. HC

36. Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer (2023)

Cillian Murphy in 'Oppenheimer' (Universal)

There are thousand-yard stares, and then there is whatever Cillian Murphy is doing in Oppenheimer. Yards somehow don’t seem the appropriate measure. Christopher Nolan’s chronology-jumbling biopic of nuclear scientist J Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atom bomb”, places the weight of the world on Murphy’s shoulders, and he manages to bear it. This is a precise, evocative character performance, intensely serious without ever seeming dour, and about as charismatic as a physics-obsessed science prodigy can be. Nolan got the lion’s share of the plaudits, but really, Murphy was the key to Oppenheimer’s triumphant success – it is his haunted eyes that give the film its moral core. LC

35. Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper (2016)

Kristen Stewart in 'Personal Shopper' (Canal+/Ciné+)

In Olivier Assayas’s modern ghost story Personal Shopper, Kristen Stewart plays Maureen Cartwright, a freelancer who ferries clothes back and forth for a famous model. She’s expected to act like a phantom in this woman’s life, slipping in and out of her home without ever leaving a trace. Stewart, with bags under her eyes and a body already semi-collapsed in defeat, plays her like she’s rehearsing the inevitable, the time she’ll be able to join her twin brother Lewis, who recently died of their shared, genetic heart condition. He promised to send her confirmation of the afterlife, so she looks for it everywhere. The actor is uncompromising in her depiction of grief suppressed, throttling its expression so that we can only catch it in the smallest of gestures, a slight jerk of the body as if she was about to regurgitate out her sadness but caught it just in time. CL

34. Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl (2014)

Rosamund Pike in 'Gone Girl' (20th Century Fox)

Cool girl is hot. Cool girl is game. Cool girl is Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunn: the sexy, poised, icy blonde psychopath and lynchpin of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, who orchestrates her own disappearance and leaves her husband (Ben Affleck) as the prime suspect. With an unblinking stare and a flat, upper-class, Carolyn-Besette-Kennedy-esque voice, Amy is all simmering rage; it bubbles away beneath the placid veneer of her supposedly perfect life. Slowly and spine-tinglingly, Pike reveals Amy’s insatiable thirst for revenge. LSE

33. Nicole Kidman in Birth (2004)

Nicole Kidman in 'Birth' (New Line Cinema)

Reducing her voice to a diaphanous quiver and slicing off her hair into a Rosemary’s Baby pixie cut, Kidman becomes one of numerous ghosts hovering around this eerie psycho-drama, in which a young boy approaches her wealthy New York widow insisting he’s the reincarnated spirit of her dead husband. Jonathan Glazer’s Birth is Kidman at her audacious best, giving herself over to a disturbing, often icky premise whole-heartedly. One long, unbroken shot sees her cycle through a raft of contradictory emotions at once while seated at the opera: grief, disbelief, affection, devastation. Can this really be happening? What on earth is she going to do next? It’s a true cliff-edge of a performance, daring us to imagine if she’ll clamber down to safety or dive straight off. AW

32. Regina Hall in Scary Movie (2000)

Regina Hall in 'Scary Movie' (Lionsgate)

The Wayan Brothers’ goofy, gross-out franchise lampooning the horror genre might not seem the first port of call for those seeking out excellent acting performances, but pay attention: Regina Hall is giving a masterclass in comedy here. As the over-the-top and foul-mouthed Brenda Meeks, Hall is outrageous, playing the most absurd moments with total and utter conviction. Her timing is both immaculate and effortless, elevating the film high and above its sometimes silly material. Broad comedy can be a tough sell, but like her forbearers Jennifer Coolidge, Catherine O’Hara and Maya Rudolph, Hall makes it look easy. Annabel Nugent

31. Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia (2011)

Kirsten Dunst in 'Melancholia' (Nordisk Film)

How does an actor even begin to express a depression so deep that only news of a humongous planet on course to collide with ours can bring ecstatic relief? Kirsten Dunst rightly won the best actress prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for such work in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, which contrasts the apocalypse with the cyclical collapse of a woman’s psyche. We meet Dunst’s Justine on her wedding day, as what starts as an earnest performance of happiness saps her dry and leaves her limbs heavy as stone. Yet, in the film’s second half, Von Trier plays one of his usual tricks on the audience. When the planet, named “Melancholia”, is confirmed to be on course for Earth, it’s Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who falls apart, and Justine who gains clarity. Dunst offers one of the most realistic depictions of depression ever put to screen, capturing both its nature as a cruel and visceral disease, and a sense of it as an odd kind sanity in the face of a cataclysmic existence. The body loses control, normality becomes a painful practice, and an unsoothable bitterness starts to rise, which brings venom to Justine’s core philosophy: “The Earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it.” CL

30. Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

Renee Zellweger in 'Bridget Jones's Diary' (Universal)

Much like Harry Potter, Paddington and 007, Bridget Jones qualifies as one of Britain’s fictional national treasures – the only one in the pack who’s a verbally incontinent thirtysomething with a love of booze and sex (although Bond definitely meets a few of those requirements). So, when Texas-born Renee Zellweger was cast in the role at the turn of the century, having established herself as Hollywood’s go-to girl-next-door, there was understandable uproar. Zellweger immediately proved the naysayers wrong with her near-flawless Home Counties accent, inappropriate office outfits and big granny knickers. Toxic stick-thin culture was still the norm in the early Noughties but Zellweger stood out as our relatable, socially awkward, normal-sized heroine (even if the film, somewhat problematically, likes to remind you that she needs to lose a few pounds). Poorly aged aspects aside, Bridget Jones’s Diary is still regularly revisited by hopeless romantics to this day – and that’s all thanks to Zellweger’s Bridget. Lauren Morris

29. Meg Ryan in In the Cut (2003)

Meg Ryan in ‘In The Cut’ (Sony Pictures)

Nicole Kidman was originally meant to do this Jane Campion erotic thriller – though she would have felt too obvious a choice to play an English professor tangling with a cop who may or may not be a killer. Instead, Meg Ryan makes poor Frannie Avery a cracked mirror of the characters she tended to play in romcoms: the lonely New York career girl restless for love. Only here her longing is carnal, conflicted and dark, and Ryan staggers through a parched, late-summer Manhattan by turn repulsed and turned on by what seems like imminent danger. Of course the film’s graphic sexuality ruined derailed Ryan’s career, because people are idiots. But what a stunning, bittersweet last hurrah. AW

28. Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls (2004)

Rachel McAdams in 'Mean Girls' (Paramount)

There is no queen bee quite like Rachel McAdams’ Regina George: girls wanted to be her, boys wanted to be with her, and teachers were scared of all she inspired. Fresh off the back of filming the 2004 romance film The Notebook, McAdams transformed with ease into a Noughties era peroxide blonde assassin, capable of ruining reputations with a doe-eyed head tilt and a fresh application of lip gloss. Played by McAdams, Regina rules the school as an intimidating despot, rather than a basic bully, who simply will not allow “fetch” to happen under her regime. LSE

27. Penelope Cruz in Volver (2006)

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Penelope Cruz in 'Volver' (Warner Bros)

Of the many fruitful collaborations between Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz, there’s none more memorable than Volver. The genre-hopping 2006 film casts Cruz and Carmen Maura as a resilient mother and daughter caught in the middle of an intergenerational revenge plot. It’s a thriller-cum-ghost story for the ages. Cruz is utterly electric here, steely and spirited in a sort of force-of-nature way, albeit still with a vulnerability that clings to her like a shroud. Hollywood has never quite figured out how to use Cruz’s talents the way Almodovar has. All the shame, really, because Volver showed us what abundant talents they are. LC

26. Christian Bale in American Psycho (2000)

Christian Bale in 'American Psycho' (Lionsgate)

There are few characters who’ll send a chill down your spine like yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman, played with dead-eyed precision by Christian Bateman in this 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s infamous novel. Much like the cult character with a penchant for facial peels, the former child actor successfully shed his fresh-faced Newsies image in 2000’s American Psycho and became a household name for good reason: he’s bloody terrifying. Whether he’s excitedly shuffling around his flat, monologuing about Huey Lewis and the News while preparing to chop up Jared Leto, or glowering at his colleagues over the font of their business cards, Bale’s satirical Bateman is unnerving, darkly funny and scarily prescient – predicting the looksmaxxing manosphere-dwellers of today. LM

25. Sasha Lane in American Honey (2016)

Sasha Lane in 'American Honey' (A24)

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold discovered Sasha Lane “in the wild” when the teenager was in Florida on spring break; Lane’s performance in American Honey makes this one of the most remarkable instances of street casting in recent memory. In it, Lane plays Star, a survivor of abuse and teenage tearaway who goes on the road with a troupe of misfit magazine peddlers, tumbling into a white-hot love affair with charming scuzzbag Jake (Shia LaBeouf). There are layers to her performance, and an extraordinary pathos – it’s Lane’s flinty conscientiousness and crooked smile that make this film the triumph it is. LC

24. Brian Tyree Henry in If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Brian Tyree Henry in 'If Beale Street Could Talk' (Annapurna)

Brian Tyree Henry is barely in Barry Jenkins’ heartbreaking adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel, but it’s arguably the performance the entire thing hinges on. He arrives about an hour in, an old friend of our hero Stephan James, and a man who’s not been seen for several years. He informs James he’s been in prison, falsely accused of stealing a car, and gestures towards the unimaginable horror that he’s witnessed and experienced while locked away. He seems entirely defeated. And it’s also like Tyree Henry has done something with his eyes here – they look nothing like they do in every other Brian Tyree Henry performance, struck of that twinkle he typically has. Instead they seem practically blank, like the lights have gone out of them. The movie moves on from him, but the pain he conveys in his short time on screen becomes all you can think about. AW

23. Song Kang Ho in A Taxi Driver (2017)

Sang Kang Ho in ‘A Taxi Driver’ (Showbox)

No performance encapsulates the brilliance of Song Kang Ho better than his role as an ignorant cabbie-turned-political smuggler in the 2017 drama A Taxi Driver. It’s a challenging, multi-layered role, and the subject matter is heavy – involving the Gwangju massacre, one of South Korea’s darkest hours – but Song’s sturdy presence elevates what might have been a forgettable drama. The titan of Korean cinema would star in superior films elsewhere – among them Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder and Parasite – but A Taxi Driver gives him the perfect platform for his eminent charm, as his selfish character finds purpose. JS

22. Florence Pugh in Little Women (2019)

Florence Pugh in 'Little Women' (Sony)

Florence Pugh had already been marked as a once-in-a-generation actor after her breakthrough role as a grieving twentysomething in Ari Aster’s Midsommar – but her turn as Amy, the precocious youngest March sister in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, released the same year, is arguably even more impressive. As Amy, Pugh achieves the impossible by making one of literature’s most unlikeable characters genuinely complex and relatable. In her hands, Amy is somehow… endearing. Her stirring speech to Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), about marriage serving as a business proposition for women in a world where they’re given so few opportunities, is a real goosebumps moment. HC

21. Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (2017)

Daniel Kaluuya in 'Get Out' (Universal Pictures)

Few films have redrawn the boundaries of the horror genre quite like Get Out – and while Jordan Peele may be the brain behind it, Daniel Kaluuya is its beating heart. As Chris, the unknowing target of a group of well-to-do suburban racists, the actor makes you feel everything he is feeling: awkwardness, disbelief, terror. Kaluuya said he didn’t watch any of the horror movies Peele recommended in the lead-up to filming because he didn’t want to be too aware of the fact Get Out is fiction – and it shows. His naturalistic performance remains grounded in emotion even when the story goes off the rails. Certainly, it shut up anyone (ahem, Samuel L Jackson) who said the role should have gone to an American instead. AN

20. Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich (2000)

Julia Roberts in ‘Erin Brockovich’ (Universal Pictures)

You have to wonder if any female A-lister has had as good a showcase since Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. Roberts is so brilliant here – strong, vulnerable, touchy, romantic, loud, soft, absolutely majestic when it comes to tearing people a new one – that her Best Actress Oscar was practically engraved before anyone had even seen the damn movie. She plays a single mum with few professional prospects standing up to the man – and saving an entire town’s water supply! – while dressed in a succession of tiny skirts and push-up bras. As Erin, Roberts manages to humanise a movie that is actually pretty procedural when you think about it. There are lots of stats, lots of contracts, lots of legalese, all cut through by the sheer dazzle of its leading lady. I still want to be Erin Brockovich when I grow up. AW

19. Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems (2019)

Adam Sandler in 'Uncut Gems' (Netflix)

Uncut Gems wasn’t the first piece of evidence that Adam Sandler, American comedy’s crown prince of manchild mugging, had bona fide acting chops – but it was the most irrefutable. As Howard “Howie” Ratner, diamond dealer, gambling addict and inveterate enrager of loan sharks, Sandler gives an electric and transformative performance, one of the century’s very best. There’s comedy to Howard, in an unsavory, rubbernecking sort of way: we marvel at his sheer cravenness. Obnoxious, scheming, and with a truly rebarbative goatee, Sandler here is the king weasel, a sad-sack in playboy’s clothing – neck-deep in quicksand but wildly flailing his limbs. LC

18. Jack Black in School of Rock (2003)

Jack Black in 'School of Rock' (Paramount)

Mike White wrote School of Rock for his friend Jack Black, and has always said that, if the actor had turned it down, he’d have thrown the script away. There was only ever one man for the role of Dewey, a skint rock musician who takes a job as a supply teacher at an uptight private school. Black’s sweaty, wild-eyed, puckish energy rips through this movie, and the quiet school corridors, like a boisterous guitar solo. But he is also tender – his scenes with Joan Cusack’s repressed principal are perfect – and he provides some of the funniest, silliest moments (and faces) committed to screen. In the end, this film is essentially 109 minutes of Jack Black larking around with a cast of literal children. But he’s the biggest kid of all. And it’s joyous. Ellie Harrison

17. Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit (2010)

Hailee Steinfeld in 'True Grit' (Paramount)

The Coen brothers love to write in the language of the silvertongued, and when actors are able to rise to the challenge (see: George Clooney’s in O Brother, Where Art Thou?), the results are rarely less than brilliant. On the face of it, Hailee Steinfeld’s part, as the plucky and relentless Mattie Ross in their gorgeous western True Grit, fits the gab-gifted Coens archetype to a tee. But there are depths and complexities in Mattie, revealed over the course of her long journey to avenge her father’s murder; that Steinfeld was able to make such a compelling heroine at the age of 14 – mastering the idiosyncratic difficulties of the Coens’ tricksy dialogue – is what makes this truly remarkable. LC

16. Anthony Hopkins in The Father (2020)

Anthony Hopkins in 'The Father' (Film4)

Anthony Hopkins became the oldest ever winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in this wrenchingly sad, disorientating masterpiece about a widower whose mind is ravaged by dementia. Hopkins swings between charm and softness and anger and terror, as he carries us with him across 100 minutes viewed through the eyes of a man whose memory is slipping away. We experience, with him, all of the realities and delusions of his day to day life. We, like him, are constantly wrong-footed and gaslit by the world. The closing scene, when Hopkins’s character is reduced to the state of a baby boy, crying for his mother, leaves you shaken. EH

15. Annette Bening in 20th Century Women (2016)

Annette Bening in '20th Century Women' (A24)

This is maybe the most honest depiction of a parent in film this century, which Annette Bening plays as if it’s a magic trick – she is both the most caring, compassionate, and soulful of mothers here, while at the same time being largely unknowable. Mike Mills’s film – about a teenage boy’s relationships with his mother, his mother’s two lodgers and his female best friend – knows that a child can never totally comprehend the entirety of the person they call a parent, insofar as they’ve only been around for a chunk of their life. So Bening flip-flops between incredible warmth and spiky ambiguity, never allowing the film to truly get a handle on her. AW

14. Lesley Manville in Another Year (2010)

Lesley Manville in ‘Another Year’ (Focus Features)

Lesley Manville’s sad, self-destructive yet well-intentioned Mary is a woman always doing or saying the wrong thing, spiralling once it happens, vowing to do better next time, then starting the same exact cycle anew. Everyone knows a Mary. Everyone’s gone out of their way to help a Mary, or avoid them entirely. God forbid you might be her. That incredibly specific spot between empathetic and exhausting is where Manville sits here, in this bittersweet drama from Mike Leigh. It’s just phenomenal to behold. AW

13. Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007)

Javier Bardem in 'No Country for Old Men' (Paramount)

Reliably backed up by a shocking haircut, the scariest character in cinema history wasn’t in a horror film, but in the Coen brothers’ neo-Western crime drama No Country for Old Men. As the methodical madman Anton Chigurgh – a Terminator prowling the plains of west Texas – Javier Bardem sublimely manages to do huge amounts with a little, whether he’s busting skulls with his air compressor-fuelled bolt gun or staring down poor gas station workers. It’s a masterclass in villainy. JS

12. Philip Seymour Hoffman in Along Came Polly (2004)

Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘Along Came Polly’ (Universal Pictures)

Throw a dart at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s CV and odds are you’ll hit a performance worthy of making this list – The Master, The Savages, Capote, you name it. But there’s something to be said for Hoffman’s supporting turn in Along Came Polly, an otherwise disposable 2004 romcom starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Hoffman, playing Stiller’s boorish, buffoonish friend, gives a wealth of hilarious line deliveries, but most impressive is his mastery of physical comedy – pratfalling one minute, lumbering vaingloriously around a basketball court the next. Along Came Polly makes you wonder if there’s anything that the late actor couldn’t do. LC

11. Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001)

Denzel Washington in ‘Training Day’ (Warner Bros)

It’s a testament to Denzel Washington that any number of his films could appear on this list, but Training Day is a fan-favourite for good reason – who doesn’t love to see an actor break bad? By this point in his career, Washington had made his name as a hero, the sort of man who holds himself to higher standards in films like Remember the Titans and Glory, but his Oscar-winning role in Training Day showed off a new side to the star. As a cocky and corrupt LAPD officer, Washington is all swagger and self-aggrandising – the perfect foil to Ethan Hawke’s newbie copper, green-behind-the-ears with his ideals and morals still intact. Washington plays Alonzo with Shakespearean gravitas not just in those epic, wall-shaking monologues, but also those quieter moments of self-justification that make the audience question whether he really believes what he is saying. AN

10. Mike Myers in Shrek (2001)

Mike Myers in 'Shrek' (Dreamworks)

Look – hear me out. Back when the crude, divisive, and pop culture-savvy children’s film Shrek came out, it was Eddie Murphy who got most of the plaudits for his role as Donkey, the ogre’s sassy sidekick. But there is no understating the genius of Mike Myers’ lead performance. Myers was brought onto the project late, after the premature death of SNL juggernaut Chris Farley, who had already recorded most of Shrek’s dialogue. Myers’ first take on the character saw Shrek speak with his normal Canadian accent; after seeing a rough cut of the film, he demanded to re-record the whole thing in a thick Scottish brogue, for no definable reason and at a supposed cost of millions of dollars. As acting choices go, this may be tantamount to divine inspiration: Myers’ robust voice work helped make Shrek the bedrock of a multi-billion dollar franchise. When it comes to performances this century, there are few more impactful: Shrek was a total phenomenon, and largely set the tone for decades of children's animation after it. LC

9. Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur (2011)

Olivia Colman in ‘Tyrannosaur’ (Film4)

Olivia Colman might have won an Oscar for The Favourite in 2019, but she deserved one eight years earlier for her role in Tyrannosaur. Watch a single minute of Paddy Considine’s hard-hitting drama and Colman’s once-surprising trajectory from comedy star to Hollywood titan makes complete sense – her performance as a kindly charity shop worker, suffering hideous domestic abuse at the hands of her husband, is an emotionally charged revelation. JS

8. Cate Blanchett in Tár (2022)

Cate Blanchett in ‘Tar’ (Universal Pictures)

Lydia Tár is not the kind of character that women often get to play. In this shrewd, caustic drama from Todd Field, Cate Blanchett embodies a woman of power and influence, an orchestra conductor at the apex of her field – but one with skeletons threatening to burst forth from the closet, in the form of a sexual misconduct scandal. Blanchett clearly relishes the chance to dig into a role this spiky and problematic; Lydia is a monster, but an entirely human one, damned by her own hubris. Hers is an ugly fall from grace, turned into gripping spectacle by Blanchett’s commitment to the role. LC

7. Mahershala Ali in Moonlight (2016)

Mahershala Ali in ‘Moonlight‘ (A24)

Moonlight is hardly lacking in emotional scenes that linger long after the credits roll, but the moment when Mahershala Ali’s Juan cradles Alex Hibbert’s young Chiron in the ocean, letting this traumatised kid feel safe and supported for the first time, must be one of the most striking images in 21st-century film. As Juan, Chiron’s mentor who also happens to make his money from selling crack to his young friend’s mother, Ali is mesmerising in his vulnerability. It’s a beautiful and tender portrait of masculinity that makes up the film’s emotional bedrock. KR

6. Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive (2001)

Naomi Watts in 'Mulholland Drive' (StudioCanal)

All David Lynch needed to see was a headshot of Naomi Watts to know she was his Betty. "I saw someone who had a beautiful soul," he’d explain to the Los Angeles Times about an actor who had been on the verge of quitting the industry for good. Lynch called her in for a meeting and it felt like a miracle, and her turn in Mulholland Drive is suitably cosmic. She plays Betty, a new-in-town ingénue who tumbles into a Hitchcockian mystery involving amnesia-stricken Rita (Laura Harring). Betty is sugar-sweet right up to the moment she walks into the audition room. Then, suddenly, something ferocious, self-possessed, and forcefully sexual emerges. Who exactly is this woman? When the film inverts, towards the end, and Watts re-materialises as the bitter, broken Diane, we wonder if Betty was a delusion. But Watts performs even the hallucination with profound compassion, as a woman courageous in her ability to love and accept love in even the darkest spaces. But she also pours some of that “beautiful soul” into Diane – even at her worst moment of self-obliteration. It’s a performance that feels near-impossible in how it offers us the totality of a person’s psyche, not only in who they are now, but in every iteration of who they could have been if the world had shaped them in kinder or crueller ways. CL

5. Denis Lavant in Holy Motors (2012)

Denis Lavant in 'Holy Motors' (Les Films du Losange)

It’s tempting to describe Denis Lavant’s part in Leos Carax’s bizarro fantasy Holy Motors as the role of a lifetime – but should that be the role of 11 lifetimes? Lavant, previously so captivating as a lust-addled soldier in Beau Travail, essentially inhabits 11 distinct characters here, ranging from grounded human personas to puckish grotesques. (At the far end of the spectrum we have “Monsiour Merde”, a gremlin-like man who eats memorial flowers, bites off someone’s finger, and kidnaps a movie star.) “Chameleonic” doesn’t quite do Lavant’s performance justice; he is a beguiling, confounding matrix of transformations, and Holy Motors is a feat of truly outrageous showmanship. LC

4. Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths (2024)

Marianne Jean-Baptiste in ‘Hard Truths' (StudioCanal)

To work as an actor with filmmaker Mike Leigh means to imagine the infinite, delicate sinews of a character – their histories, their friends and families, the very worst thing that’s ever happened to them but which they’d never, ever share. Most of this doesn’t make the finished product in a literal sense, but it’s bubbling under every scene. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, reuniting with Leigh nearly 30 years after their Oscar-nominated first collaboration Secrets & Lies, makes her depressed Londoner Pansy relentlessly full. She moans, she picks fights, she is cruel. Then she withdraws, a loaded spring. She makes the temperature of each room change. You always – no matter how plainly horrid she’s being – understand her, Jean-Baptiste imbuing this very British breed of misery-guts with an ocean of pain, self-loathing and bitterness right beneath her scowling expression. AW

3. Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread (2017)

Daniel Day-Lewis in 'Phantom Thread' (Universal)

“Phantom Thread over There Will Be Blood?,” you might shriek, to which we respond: “No question.” When it comes to Daniel Day-Lewis’s oeuvre, Daniel Plainview might be the go-to choice, but it’s Reynolds Woodcock, the uptight haute couture dressmaker in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 drama, that was very his finest role from these past 26 years. There’s a sumptuous quality to Woodcock, laced with a razor-sharp sense of unpredictability; he manages to induces as much dread while simply sitting at a breakfast table as Day-Lewis did when he was lobbing knives at Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York or bludgeoning a poor soul with a bowling pin in There Will Be Blood. JS

2. Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008)

Heath Ledger as Joker in 'The Dark Knight' (Warner Bros)

The fact that Heath Ledger died of an overdose months after finishing work on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight adds unforeseen darkness to his performance as The Joker – but even without the autobiographical tragedy, his villainous turn was already plenty morbid. The actor is anarchic and unsettling as the villain, completely believable as a psychopath who is as intelligent as he is unhinged. In his half hour on screen, Ledger effectively wiped away any of the camp associated with the character (as previously played by Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson), smearing it off as haphazardly as the red lipstick smudged across his face. In what would become his last ever role, Ledger made The Joker entirely his own. Practically every comic-book villain performance since has felt like an attempt to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of this one. AN

1. Laura Dern in Inland Empire (2006)

Laura Dern in 'Inland Empire' (518 Media)

Inland Empire is a famously perplexing film – a surreal, relentlessly unsettling look at moviemaking and life itself, filtered through the inscrutable dream logic of writer-director David Lynch. The late filmmaker opaquely described Inland Empire as being about “a woman in trouble”, the woman in question being Laura Dern, playing (ostensibly, at least) an actor who gets cast in a romantic drama. Dern is asked to do everythinghere, and she somehow manages it: the range of emotions and tones she cycles through is bewildering. But it’s the intensity of her performance that lingers most in the mind: has anguish ever been put on screen quite so vividly? Dern constantly finds truth within artifice, her face bringing a terrifying humanity to a film that might otherwise be swallowed up by its own shadows. That Inland Empire remains little-seen by the wider public – despite Dern’s fame, and Lynch’s – is unsurprising, and unlikely to ever change. But that doesn’t diminish what was achieved here. Ledger’s Joker spawned a generation of imitators; Dern’s performance is its own island, unmannered and unmoored, not quite like anything else. LC

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”