While other reviewers might have already finished their end-of-decade rankings, we are only just now getting to it. Why so late, you may ask? Well, other than the need to catch up on a bunch of movies we missed in this past decade, we also want to give this list some serious thoughts. The plan is to do four lists: Best Actors, Best Actresses, Best supporting performances and Best Movies. It’s not comprehensive, we know, but this will be more of a retrospective.
Our principle for compiling this list is to try to cover a wide range of performances. This means differentiating our list by genres, performance styles and the experiences the audience get from the performance.
With that out of the way, let us begin with our top 15.
First up in the category is comedy. And here, there are already quite a few contenders. Covering a wide range of comedic styles, we have the dialogue-driven, fourth-wall-breaking work of Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool to the awkward inner monologue of Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim; from the zany work of James Franco in The Interview to the quiet character comedy of Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel. But for us, it’s definitely Simon Pegg in 2013’s The World’s End.
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15. Simon Pegg as Gary King in The World’s End (2013)
The greatest comedic performance has to be judged both by its power to induce laughter but also its ability to craft character and provide a certain range. Based on this criteria, Pegg's comedic performance is absolutely genius. He covers so many grounds, from zany to subtle to emotional. He also uses many comedic styles and elements from dialogue delivery to physical to character-based. Pegg rises among other comedic performances as an absolute virtuoso. You also can’t deny his charisma as a performer. His presence is felt in every scene he’s in. Pegg simply demands your attention. He focuses your attention and makes you notice every joke he delivers. He is simply the greatest comedic performer in our shortlist.
Next up, let’s talk Action/ thriller and adventures. The reason why we lump these categories is because we think these types of films require a similar style of performance: the hero performance. The actor has to exude a certain type of heroism. In terms of physical feats, you have the stunts of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt from the Mission Impossible franchise and the amazing choreography of Keanu Reeve’s John Wick. There’s the charm of a leading man in Charlie Hunnam’s Lord Percival and Jamie Foxx’s Django Unchained. There’s also the underdog in Michael B Jordan’s Adonis. There’s also the silent anti-hero of Tom Hardy’s Max from the Madmax franchise. But our spot goes to the every-man hero:
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14. Gong Yoo as Seok Woo in Train to Busan (2016)
Gong Yoo’s performance mostly reminds us of John McClane in the Die-Hard movies. It’s the every-man thrown into an impossible situation. There is a really strong, concise story arc that Gong Yoo has to pull off. While his character has to run away from zombies, he also has to become a truly loving father and a selfless man. Like the best kinds of hero, he pulls this off perfectly. Not only is he the best kind of leading man you can project yourself onto, he also manages to pull on our heart string.
So just a step above action movie performances would be the horror performances. And here there is a fascinating array of performances. While there is the bare minimum of conveying fear, the most capable horror actors bare their souls in performances that can be absolutely devastating to watch. Daniel Kaluuya gives a raw and unfiltered performance that peers into the racial division of contemporary America in Get Out. Ewan McGregor explores alcoholism and trauma in Doctor Sleep. And Leonardo DiCaprio nearly snatched this spot with his gut-wrenching work in Shutter Island. However, our picks use their combined power to defeat the Leo man himself.
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13. Robert Pattinson & Willem Dafoe as the two guys in The Lighthouse (2019)
Okay, yes, we’re cheating just a bit here. But it’s just really hard not to put both of these two guys on the list. Together, Pattinson and Dafoe’s performances make the entire film work. It’s really hard to find horror performances that so deeply explore the depravity of humanity’s soul. But also, these performances are primal and totally inscrutable. It feels like the actors are painting something abstract and magical with their bodies and faces. Dafoe generally exudes expressive authority and sometimes conveys intimidation, dominance and brief moments of insecurity. This is perfectly contrasted by Pattinson’s quiet and brooding persona, which itself explodes in moments of fear, anger and ecstasy. Together these performances make for one of the most exuberant film experiences of the decade.
Now, we’re going to change the tone a bit and talk about romance. Romantic films often require specific types of character performances and hence the criteria is rather unique. The actor has to craft an interesting character but also respond well to their romantic counterpart. They also have to convey their own interpretation of love. This might come in the form of a sense of familiarity with Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight. It could also be pure love as in Stephen James in If Beale Street Could Talk. Joaquin Phoenix did an incredible job playing romance to a voice in Her and Ryan Gosling channeled the energy of a young Brando in Blue Valentines. And although we really love Gosling, this spot has to go to Timothee Chalamet.
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12. Timothee Chalamet as Elio Perlman in Call Me By Your Name (2017)
This cut was especially hard for us, because Gosling and Chalamet gave two very different kinds of performances. But while Gosling channels a flawed version of an old Hollywood male lead, Chalamet is playing a character we don’t often see. He is playful and assertive yet many times feminine and alluring. In a film that’s supposed to feel genderless, Chalamet channels a universal kind of love. He also captures this sense of longing and regret and acceptance, all wrapped up in very few, very concise verbal and facial expressions. This is the youngest actor to make it on this list. And for our money, he has a huge future in front of him.
Next up, we’ve got iconic, popular performances. This category is much simpler. The actor has to capture the essence of an iconic character, and succeed in channelling that essence to us, the audience, whilst also making it their own. Again, simple criteria but not easy to meet. We’ve seen over and over again how actors could mess this up. But when they get this right, they can create a long lasting impact. Of course the actors from the MCU gave decade-defining performances and Christian Bale also killed it as Bruce Wayne from the Dark Knight Trilogy. Daniel Craig uses Skyfall as a chance to take his James Bond performance to a whole new level. We almost went with Sylvester Stallone’s return as Rocky but if you’re looking for a man who can't take a punch, we can’t do better than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
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11. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in Logan (2017)
Since the last decade, Hugh Jackman has defined the role of wolverine. But it’s really 2017's Logan that he began to explore the deepest and darkest part of this character. It’s kind of hard to describe what is great about this performance, other than the fact that it just shows a different side to this gritty and brutal yet beloved character.. Jackman portrays Wolverine’s vulnerability both emotionally and physically. And we have not loved this character more than we did in that movie.
We think the older brother of the popular character performance is the historical character. These actors have the same task of living up to an icon. Only this time, the icon is a real person. So now, they have to do the balancing act of interpreting an individual’s life and their actual legacy. There are so many great performances within this category, so we have to divide the category in two types. First, we will talk about the performance that focuses on the character’s historical legacy. These performances try to capture characters that are larger than life, covering their massive legacies in strokes of brilliant acting. These include Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr., Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Colin Firth as King George and Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. But there is one performance so brilliant it almost tops this entire list:
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10. Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012)
It’s kind of hard to label and critique Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. You kind of just have to feel this performance. Before we came to this decision, we watched all the performances listed above side by side. And the minute Lincoln came up, it just blew every other performance out of the water. It’s the cadence, the expression, the voice and just the pure internal conveyance of emotions. It’s really difficult to describe. God, we just love every scene he’s in.
The second type of based-on-a-real-person performance digs deeper. It usually engages characters that are less well known and explore the inner life of those people. These performances often involve the actor interpreting the character in their own ways, not necessarily imitating those people like the last category but giving a detailed character study. Tom Hanks as Sully was pretty amazing, so was Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg. However, it is time that we give Leo his deserved accolade:
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9. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belford in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
We almost considered creating a different category for this performance: the longitudinal performance. This is to illustrate the rise and fall Leo managed to create in this performance. In this honest-to-god super versatile performance, Leo covered so many grounds in one character. He illustrated how one person could change so much in one life. He covered so many emotions from contentment to ambition to ecstasy and last but not least, grief. His one performance does so much, it’s a crime he didn't bring home an Oscar for it.
Now, it’s time to talk about characters with distinct personalities. We begin with characters who are the living definitions of enigmas. They are out of the ordinary, unusual but also quirky. Here we have Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina, and Christian Bale as Michael Burry in The Big Short. But the one that really takes the cake is Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
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8. Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler (2014)
Gyllenhaal is a phenomenal actor as proven by his past works, Prisoners and Zodiac being some of our personal favourites. However in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal really outdid himself. His performance was eerie and disturbing but also subdued. He is a wallflower, a struggling individual trying to make it in the dog-eat-dog world of journalism. We can all relate to that, more or less. But as he dives deeper into this ugly industry, we don't know whether to feel bad for him or just disgusted. Thanks to Gyllenhaal's excellent diabolical performance, we are forever left on that crossroad, wondering if subjected to the same circumstances, would we have done anything different.
Another performance style is one that seems to belong more to stage productions because of its sheer volume and expense. We’re talking performances where the actors put all their emotions up front, using all of their power. It’s one way to express various ranges of emotions and attitudes. This is such that the actor fills the screen and pretty much chews the scenery. Top scorers here would be Denzel Washington in Fences, Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight and most recently Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. As you might see, all these guys are men of words. The one that took this spot, however, is a performance with less words.
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7. Jaoquin Phoenix as Freddie in The Master (2012)
Jaoquin Phoenix gives a lot of great performances this past decade. And he almost took the spot from Bale with his Joker performance. However, it’s really his performance as Freddie in The Master that really stuns us all. Phoenix exudes anger in every bit of his expression, but his performance is still really outward. It’s in the expression, the stance, the cadences. There is something so physical and yet internal about this. While everyone else listed previously has to exude certain character traits in words, Phoenix manages to manifest what is inside into something purely external. Freddie never says to us what he feels but he still delivered a stunning psychological study.
If you feel like we snubbed some of those great dialogue-driven performances in the last category, don’t worry. We reserve the next spot for actors who deliver great dialogues in the best way possible. The spot goes to Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke.
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6. Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke in Locke (2013)
Tom Hardy is a truly versatile actor. In this brilliant film by Steven Knight, he is asked to play a character who’s driving somewhere while calling his friends and family. It really is just that. And as you might have guessed, this film lives or dies by Hardy’s ability to deliver these words. He uses dialog how it should be used, like music. He knows how to invoke certain emotions in certain moments. The performance here is simply Shakespearean.
Tom Hardy as Locke actually falls into another category of realist performances. This is actually a good thing, because it means we don’t have to pick between him and our next top spot. What do we mean by realist performance? They are the kind of performances that aim to portray real-life characters. Here the goal is to act as normal and unremarkable as possible. You have to be subtle most of the time but expressive just at the right time. Runner-ups include Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines and Michael B Jordan in Fruitvale Station. Adam Sandler filled the above criteria perfectly in The Meyerowitz Story. And this makes sense cause Noah Baumbach often creates the most realistic dialogues you could find. But there is one performance from the Baumbach pile that tops Sandler’s. It’s Adam Driver's Charlie from The Marriage Story.
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5. Adam Driver as Charlie in The Marriage Story (2019)
We think pretty much everyone knows what scene really won Driver all his accolades in 2019. And yes that was an amazing scene. It might be one of the greatest acting moments of the past decade. But we would like to explore the other scenes too. Driver is remarkable in how unremarkable he can be. His personality and pain creeps through in the most mundane moments that we often miss in first viewing. All this tension and emotions are built up and that’s why that one scene was so memorable as well as raw and heart-wrenching for us. It’s the conclusion to a masterpiece performance crafted from the very first line spoken in the film.
Next up, we’ll start looking at performances that evoke some sort of responses from us as viewers. And let’s start out by looking at the performances that touch our hearts and souls: the emotional performances. These often involve characters going through some terrible ordeals while reaching into the depth of grief and trauma. One of the best contenders would be Hugh Jackman playing a determined father in Prisoners, Matthew McConaughey as an AIDs patient in Dallas Buyers Club, and coming literally inches from taking this spot, Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea. Despite all these great performances, Chiwetel Ejiofor took us on such an unforgettable emotional journey in 12 Years A Slave… we had no choice but to give him this spot.
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4. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup in 12 Years A Slave (2013)
This is an oddly underrated performance in a film that actually won Best Picture. It’s really strange that we’re not talking about Ejiofor’s performance more. He not only exhibits a complete range of human emotions, but also manages to give a nuanced portrayal of each of these emotions. There is one scene in the movie where he expresses a sense of hopelessness. It’s both tragic and magical in the way he did it. One can’t help but sympathise with what he must be thinking and feeling, reliving all those pain and dehumanization his ancestors went through years ago. Whatever his thoughts were, he managed to create a truly beautiful and nuanced work of drama. And we defy anyone to not be driven to tears by him in this movie.
Next up is a category that more or less stems out of the last one: emotional performances that are internal. These are characters who express what they feel mostly inside. These are performances where the actors hardly have a single expressive moment. They convey everything internally, and you can derive so much from so little. Examples? John Cho in Columbus, Ben Foster in Leave No Trace, Matthew McConaughey in Mud and Gosling also almost snatched another spot with Drive. We think all of them are great, but the most complex internal performance here comes from Oscar Isaac under the tutelage of the great Coen Brothers
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3. Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
We think Isaac’s performance here can also be classified as a musical performance. This is because his character expresses his feelings most strongly in the many songs that he sings. The dynamic between his still affect and his vocals create this stark sense of dissonance. How could such a passionate singer seem so hopeless in real life. Isaac portrays the numbness to pain – acceptance of one’s limit in life. But as he opens his mouth to sing, just a tiny ray of hope and confidence seems to tacitly peek through.
Coming to the penultimate category for this list, we’re looking at performances that are distinctly human. And by human, we mean an animal that tries to seek meaning in a cosmos that sees us as meaningless individuals. This might be Colin Farrell searching for the meaning of love and connection in The Lobster or George Clooney dealing with a death in a family in The Descendants or Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory and Robert De Niro dealing with his own mortality in The Irishman. But alas, the performance that makes us question our human lives the most comes from Bruce Wayne himself.
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2. Michael Keaton as Birdman in Birdman (2014)
The most incredible thing about Keaton’s performance is just how viscerally raw it feels. A lot of people have talked about how Keaton draws from his own experiences to portray this washed up superhero star trying to be taken seriously again. But regardless of how he achieves it, the experience he puts the audience though is transformative in the best way possible. The camera is on him for the most part of the movie, so you’re watching his every little movement, every little bit of his character. And with a combination of amazing dialogue delivery, physical work and a sense of internal dread, Keaton takes us on a journey of what seems like a meaningfully empty cosmos.
Okay, so what kind of performance are we setting as the greatest of the year? Well, to be honest, the last category is just created so that we can put this guy on the top spot. But in any case, we call this category the transcendence performance. Here, unlike the last category, the characters are united with something greater: a cause beyond their singular physical life. Much like the last category, the character may feel incredibly alienated, but they’re also facing a greater sense of being that they may not be able to reach. This might include Michael Fassbender playing an Android with a god complex in Prometheus and Alien Covenant. It can be James McAvoy coming to terms with his multiple selves in Split or Jake Gyllenhaal’s existential dread at seeing his doppelgänger in Enemy. Ethan Hawke almost snatched this spot with a priest coming to term with God in First Reformed. But for our first spot, we want to give it to probably the best actor of the past decade, giving the best performance he’s done thus far: Ryan Gosling as K.
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1. Ryan Gosling as K in Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Ryan Gosling is just an excellent actor. Every film he’s in he commits to his role and gives a 110%. So why single out K as his best performance? Well, if we talk about the complexity of this performance, we might end up giving the spoiler to this movie. And it’s an excellent film so we’re not going to do that. Suffice to say, Gosling is given a really difficult task here. And he pulls everything out of his actor toolkit: the internal actor, the expressive acting, the physical feats and of course, charisma. Watching K in the world of Blade Runner is like peering through the multiple layers of what it means to be human, only to find despair disguised as hope.
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