Lists: everyone’s favorite pastime. Within the film sphere of discourse, perhaps more than any other, there is no better driver of community and outrage than a good old-fashioned list. Ebert’s Best of the Year lists, Sight and Sound’s decennial Top 100, and the freshly debated New York Times 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century have created as much passion for the medium of film as they have sparked debate. Last month, The Ringer published their 101 Best Performances of the 21st Century, a remarkably ambitious project that has seen no lack of conversation surrounding it. Much of the intent of Cinema Soliloquy is to discuss the humanity and metaphors buried within the most important films in my own personal canon, and I tend to take an especially examined look at the filmmakers themselves. After all, every piece published here on this publication is titled in that fashion - Film Name, by Filmmaker. Today, I wanted to take a slight detour, into lesser-tread waters, and put together my own list of the Best* Performances of the 21st Century.
Of course, asterisk required here, this is my list. I have not seen every film released this century, despite my best efforts, and I tend to lean favorable towards things that fall into my taste puddles - dramas, auteurism, and East Asian modernism take up a significant portion of this list. There will be niches on here that are almost certainly catered to my exact flavor, and I do not expect this to be some sort of symbol of subjectivity, despite my best titling efforts. I also followed the same rule that The Ringer set in their list, limiting the list to only include one role per performer. If I hadn’t, I think I would have a list entirely full of four people (I like what I like!). Alas, there can only be one Zhou Dongyu on my list, try as she might… without further ado, I invite the same community and debate here, and hope you enjoy my 25 Best* Performances of the 21st Century (so far).
25. Kristine Kujath Thorp as Signe, Sick of Myself (2022)
There is no better depiction of Main Character Syndrome than Kristine Kujath Thorp in Sick of Myself, a wildly dark and funny drama from Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. Signe, jealous of her kleptomaniac slash modern artist boyfriend, continually descends deeper into madness to garner the attention she lacks at home. What begins as a simple lie evolves into something truly cataclysmic, as the whole world falls in love, at least for a little while, with the tragedy of Signe. Thorp’s performance is a high-wire act, balancing an ego the size of the sun with a remarkably fragile likability. It is no simple feat, but Thorp pulls it off essentially flawlessly in this underseen gem of a film.
24. Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, The Prestige (2006)
Christopher Nolan’s films tend to rely much more on the hand of their maker than the puppetry within - while there are a number of well-regarded performances throughout his filmography, I think that on the whole, these films are not always vessels for individualism, and intentionally so. The Prestige, in every way, should be the same - a wildly complex plot structure, twist after twist after twist, and constant visual effects obscuring the two leads at the center of the story, and yet, one in particular shines too bright to ignore. Christian Bale, one of our greatest living actors, playing a double role that is only revealed at the conclusion of the film’s story, is just stunningly good in this film. His charisma, his very carefully veiled fragility, his sheer confidence in the sacrifice he makes to save his family, it is all just out of this world. For me, this is Bale’s standout performance of the century, in a career already full of them.
23. Eva Victor as Agnes, Sorry, Baby (2025)
The most recent entry on my list, and the performance that I think deserves far more award discussion than I have seen - Eva Victor as Agnes, the central lead of Victor’s directorial debut Sorry, Baby. Victor is unbelievably endearing in their darkly comedic drama, portraying the inevitability of trauma in a truly profound way. They are funny, they are tragic, and they are gravitationally inescapable, pulling the whirlwind of emotion from every corner of the film into this truly spectacular performance. It is a deceivingly challenging task to carry the performance of a film that you write and direct as well, but Victor pulled it off expertly.
22. Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird, Lady Bird (2017)
I mean, what is there to say? I have already written lengthily about this film, one of my all-time favorites, and powered essentially solely by Saoirse Ronan’s performance. Every generation has their own coming-of-age film, and with it, a coming-of-age role model, and Lady Bird is that in every way for people of my age. She is revolutionary but afraid to say it, she is full of wanderlust and entirely comfortable when she gets a speck of praise, and she is, by the film’s conclusion, endearing through every fault. Director Greta Gerwig has said that she knew Ronan was right for the role essentially immediately - as the two read through the script in a hotel room, things had clicked by page two of the read, and the rest is history.
21. Greta Lee as Nora, Past Lives (2023)
In the last five years, Greta Lee has only had three live-action roles in feature films, working relatively sparsely on the silver screen (despite some prolific television work). When she has taken a narrative role, the results are undeniably impressive, with no better example than Celine Song’s debut Past Lives. Lee is entrancing as Nora, the clear personal translation of Song’s own life and relationship, portraying a deeply melancholic longing for a life that could have been while still relishing the inescapable present. The final scene of Past Lives might just be the best of the last few years for me, working entirely on the back of the complicated emotions portrayed through Lee’s work here. The subtleties of emotion that she is able to coax out of microscopic scenes are impossibly hard to appreciate in the moment, but leave an impression of true genius behind.
20. Lubna Azabal as Nawal Marwan, Incendies (2010)
If Greta Lee succeeds in the subtleties, Lubna Azabal sits at the exact opposite end of the spectrum in Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies. This is a film of immense tragedy, of the violent kind, depicted entirely through the tragic eyes of Azabal. We follow the immensely upsetting evolution into parenthood for Nawal Marwan, and the catastrophes never end - the death of her mother, the murder of her lover by her family, narrowly escaping a bus shooting and witnessing the killing of several other innocents in the process, political imprisonment, and much, much, much more. The film is a true achievement in drawing every single drop of sympathy out of a situation as possible, much of it based on real events, brought to life entirely by Azabal’s performance.
19. Yao Huang as Pei Pei, The Crossing (2018)
This is certainly the most “obscure” pick on this list, but I think the performance of Yao Huang as Pei Pei more than speaks for itself in the debut of Chinese filmmaker Bai Xue, The Crossing. Huang plays a high school girl wrought with wanderlust, trapped on the precarious border of Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The young Pei Pei is recruited by Hong Kong smugglers to carry cell phones back over the border to her home in Shenzhen, a role that she particularly excels at given her unassuming appearance and unique passport status. The film is designed as a carefully told pseudo-documentary of the strange situation that many on the border experience with daily crossings, pushed through the state-mandated industry in a way that is both brilliant and curious. The result is nothing short of a triumph, working only through the perfectly placed fear and overconfidence of Huang’s character.
18. Anders Danielsen Lie as Anders, Oslo, August 31st (2011)
While this may seem “low” given what I am about to say, I need to reiterate that much of this list shares a similar pedestal in my mind, one containing performances that need no notes. That being said, if I allowed myself to list performers more than once, there might be no actor with more roles here than the great Anders Danielsen Lie, who is certainly one of Norway’s greatest exports at this point. Lie is incredible in every single role he touches, but particularly poignant in his frequent collaborations with Joachim Trier, starring in all three of the unofficial Oslo Trilogy. Picking between those three (and his many other ridiculously good performances) is just impossible for me, but I settled on the film that he is undoubtedly the central gravitational force of, Trier’s Oslo, August 31st. Lie has mastered the subtleties of depression, the longing, poignant depictions of missed chances, and clear remembrance of long-lost memories in every role, but none more than this one.
17. Espen Klouman Høiner as Erik, Reprise (2006)
…Which makes it all the more impressive just good Espen Klouman Høiner is opposite Lie in Trier’s Reprise. The two play best friends and authors, with Høiner portraying the sort of guidepost for the viewer. He is not as successful as his friend, but he wants to be so badly. We get an incredibly personal performance from the Norwegian, who clearly understands the minute mannerisms of his character Erik to an unreal degree. Trier’s films always have an incredible sense of relatability, much of it from the script, but the entire premise would fall apart without the spectacular performances he gets from his troupe. In Reprise, as much as I truly love Lie, it is Høiner that shines here. We feel for him, more than nearly any other character in any film I have seen, in an incredibly modernistic way. Høiner’s credits outside of this film are fairly sparse, but what he managed to do in Trier’s debut narrative feature is truly special.
16. Olivia Cooke as Emma, Little Fish (2020)
Performance can be a challenging thing to discuss in isolation - so much of a film’s success quantitatively or emotionally is holistic, brought about through a combination of factors that are impossible to separate. Like a good soup, great films make more than the sum of their parts, with those individual flavors all playing in perfect balance to create something whole. Rarely does a soup, or a film, work so well with just one star, one performance that lifts those around them, the script, and the production as a whole to new heights purely on its own merit - but Olivia Cooke does just that in Little Fish. Cooke plays Emma, the girlfriend of a man experiencing the onset of an amnesia pandemic that is slowly hitting the entire world. She arduously fights with his loss of memory while trying to remain a good partner - learning to love the version she met of her boyfriend just as much as the ever-changing image of him she wakes up next to. Cooke is one of my personal favorites, but her performance in Little Fish is certainly her best.
15. Mikey Madison as Anora, Anora (2024)
Rarely do I agree with the Academy Awards on anything, but they got it right last year - Mikey Madison as Anora is a lightning bolt of energy, passion, chaos, and truly remarkable acting. Madison was not as “unknown” as some outlets have made it seem prior to her securing the titlular role of Sean Baker’s Oscar-winning film, but she was certainly not a household name. It has been well-reported how intense the study that Madison underwent for this role is, and it pays off, without a doubt. She is funny, emotional, havoc-wreaking, and truly impossible to look away from. We want the best for Anora, even at her worst, and the film’s choice to follow her in nearly every single scene means that much of the emotional impact lies solely on Madison’s shoulders. Luckily, the film community has recognized just how good this performance is, and Mikey Madison will certainly get the chance to put her supreme talent to work for many years to come.
14. Riz Ahmed as Ruben, Sound of Metal (2019)
We are now getting into the very, very best, the cream of the crop, the performances that I consider somewhat untouchable this century. From here on out, I am not sure there is much delineation for me personally. I could swap essentially everything in this range, but order must remain nonetheless… and speaking of range, I’m not sure we talk enough about that of Riz Ahmed. From Nightcrawler to Rogue One to his voice work, I’m not sure any actor working today has reached as deep into their bag of tricks as Riz has. Those performances are great, without a doubt, but Ahmed’s magnum opus to this point is most certainly his portrayal of Ruben in Sound of Metal. Playing a metal drummer who loses his hearing, he is brought to the very brink of his sanity, losing everything that has made him who he wanted to be. This film is one-of-a-kind in many ways, but Ahmed’s performance is what makes it truly exceptional.
13. Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network (2010)
This has to be on every list of this kind, right? I think The Social Network would have worked in nearly all permutations, with Sorkin’s script and Fincher’s steady hand directing being a pretty airtight formula for a winner, but my goodness did they get lucky with their casting here. It is still a real challenge to separate Eisenberg from this role, a fate that can sometimes be limiting, but not here. His careful imitation of the incredible oddities of the real Zuckerberg sit in that perfect gray area of being both believable and clearly practiced. Everything from the cadence of speech to his facial expressions operate on an insanely high level throughout the film, and I think much of our modern understanding of Zuckerberg’s behavior, even today, is based on the portrayal here.
12. Anya Taylor-Joy as Lily, Thoroughbreds (2017)
Okay… I’m cheating here. Only a little bit, though! Those that have seen Cory Finley’s 2017 film Thoroughbreds should understand that separating the two central performances here is essentially impossible. Both Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke are unbelievably good, playing off of one another in perfect harmony. The awkwardness and companionship that is delivered by both performers carries us through a thrilling series of events, balanced so well between the different worlds of each character. Alas, Olivia Cooke has already been mentioned on this list, so we will have to settle for the equally impressive work of Anya Taylor-Joy as Lily here. Taylor-Joy is lights out in this film, holding a facade of apathy expertly in front of a very fragile interior, putting up one of the truly best performances of this century.
11. Sebastian Stan as Edward, A Different Man (2024)
It can be somewhat easy to reward performances that are “physically demanding”: the roles that require intense weight gain or loss, or significant appearance change, tend to stand out as “brave” on the surface. While that can be true, I think in many ways the preparation can almost mask the performance on screen itself, sometimes in a way that diminishes the actual talent of the actor or actress on screen. In 2024, we got what I consider the best performance of the year, combining these two things - an enormous amount of physical preparation paired with just magnetic on-screen presence. I am talking, of course, about Sebastian Stan as Edward in A Different Man, a role in which he spends the first act of the film wearing full make-up to mimic neurofibromatosis, before being “cured” of the physical condition in the story. The production’s tight timeline and relatively small budget made it so that long, consecutive shooting days forced Stan to keep the face on for essentially the full duration of this portion of production. The after effects of that necessity are clear - as Stan experienced the real glares and sneers from the real NYC public walking around in this face as Edward, he translated those feelings directly into his character, and the result is nothing short of magnificent.
10. Clive Owen as Theo Faron, Children of Men (2006)
How do you portray mass tragedy as an individual? So often we talk about trauma and grief through this easy-to-grasp translation, evaluating the effects on the individual. It can be harder, much harder, to actually understand how tragedy can harm the collective. In Children of Men, Clive Owen manages to do it, painting the horrific consequences of a world where nobody can give birth through just his performance in a harrowing 109 minutes. Owen is just out of this world in basically every single scene in the film, using a combination of intimate facial expressions and jaw-dropping physical performances throughout. For much of the film’s third act, we follow a hobbled Theo Faron as he stumbles through the rubble of a city under siege, desperately trying to find salvation while still helping those close to him. The entire film feels real, feels documentarian, and it is because of the bloody, violent, raw humanity that Owen puts on screen.
9. Zhou Dongyu as Ansheng, SoulMate (2016) / Kim Da-mi as Mi-so, Soulmate (2023)
Alright, now I’m cheating for real. Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung’s 2016 film SoulMate was perhaps not the “introduction”, but certainly the breakout of Chinese megastar Zhou Dongyu, playing the role of Li Ansheng. The film follows the friendship of two girls as they age from adolescence into adulthood, constantly brought together and torn apart by things both in and out of their control. It is a remarkably poignant film, and truly one of my favorite performances from maybe my favorite performer, who manages to capture the awkwardness of friendship as well as she portrays its warmth. In 2023, SoulMate was remade in Korea, stylized as Soulmate, starring another one of my favorites in Kim Da-mi. Zhou’s performance in the 2016 version is about as untouchable as it gets for me, but Kim rose to the challenge in every possible way. The films are not exactly identical, with several changes made for cultural and narrative reasons, but the characters are mirror images at their cores - women that want to love, so badly, but can’t seem to find the right way to do so. I could have listed these separately certainly, but the performances given by both Zhou and Kim compliment each other, a dialogue through space and time, and are two of the very, very best this century.
8. George Clooney as Michael, Michael Clayton (2007)
When I finished putting this list together, there was a surprising lack of Hollywood “stars” on it, at least for me - I am obviously a bit biased towards certain genres and styles of filmmaking, often ones that might not promote American celebrity, but even still I expected more of the top of the A-list than what I ended up with. One of the few exceptions is George Clooney, an actor that I think has become a little underrated recently as his stardom has more than eclipsed his ability over the last three decades. Clooney’s ability to be both serious and funny, to be undeniably attractive and stone-faced while showing cracks of vulnerability, and to hold an audience in the palm of his hand with an inescapable gravity, are sort of just unmatched in Hollywood this century. Very, very few actors can do the things that Clooney can do in a lead role, and his best performance is a hard one to pick. I went with Michael Clayton, an all-around incredible film that really is held together by Clooney’s magnetism more than anything else. Clooney is so smooth, so charismatic, but when things go off the rails, the slow, emotional descent into chaos he conveys is just electrifying.
7. Masahiro Higashide as Baku/Ryohei, Asako I & II (2018)
We have seen some great acting work in “dual roles” this century - I have already mentioned Christian Bale in The Prestige, but performances like that of Paul Dano in There Will be Blood, Armie Hammer in The Social Network, and even Michael B. Jordan in Sinners this year are all outstanding. The best of this challenging proposition, to me, is Masahiro Higashide in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II. Unlike many dual roles, Higashide is tasked with almost contradicting himself constantly. Bale, Dano, Hammer, and Jordan’s characters are all sort of “twin” characters, working in complement to convey the complexities of humanity in two lights. Higashide, playing Baku and Ryohei, is playing the two boyfriends of the titular character Asako, and needs to convey the good and bad of both in exceedingly different ways. His performance covers about as broad of a range of skills as one can in less than two hours - while Baku is mysterious and quiet, flaky and unreliable, and, by the end, supremely superficial, Ryohei could not be more real. Ryohei, who we spend most of the film’s runtime watching, is emotionally complex, naive but observant, and the differences that Higashide is able to express in these two roles is just incredible - one of the best of this century, without a doubt.
6. Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, Get Out (2017)
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that the supernova that was Jordan Peele’s debut film Get Out would be far less explosive without the revelation of Daniel Kaluuya’s breakout performance as Chris. Kaluuya’s brilliant work in the film has certainly been recognized, but I fear we may have forgotten just how good he really is. Chris needs to be both skeptical and willing, desiring both independence and willfully ignorant of the trap he has walked himself into. The entire sequence in the sunken place, a phrase that is now just common parlance thanks to this film, might just be the greatest three minutes of any performance on this list. It is “easy” enough for actors to cry, to show emotion, to laugh, or to be uncomfortable - doing that all, while keeping an audience truly glued to the screen, is slightly harder. What Kaluuya does in this film is not only these things, though, he is telling the story of centuries-old allegory, of real, raw, American history, in a single performance, and doing it just about as good as any living actor.
5. Mahershala Ali as Juan, Moonlight (2016)
Okay, I might have lied - earlier, I said that everything in this top fourteen or so is more-or-less equally ranked in my head. The honest truth is… this is it. The summit, the absolute peak of the mountain, the apex of this century’s greatest acting performances. These next five are not just untouchable, they are mythologically canonized for me, these five performances are what I would give the aliens to show them: what are we really like? I nearly broke every rule I had for the creation of this list on this entry, because every performance in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is kind of just the best display of acting ever. The ability of all three actors playing Chiron throughout his life (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes) can’t go without mentioning, but the real showstealer of this film is Mahershala Ali as Juan. His time on screen is relatively short, only seven or eight scenes, but my goodness do they make me levitate. The entire opening sequence of Moonlight, as Jenkins acrobatically and smoothly whips his camera around the backstreets of Miami, operates with the understanding that we are locked in, so intently, to the black hole-like gravity of Ali. He is cool, he is the image of masculinity, and yet, he is sensitive, caring, and a role model. This constant contradiction is confusing to both Juan and Chiron, but Ali plays it genuinely perfectly.
4. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, The Master (2012)
I have mentioned several performers that would be on here multiple times if not for the rule I implemented to limit actors to one entry each — Anders Danielsen Lie, Zhou Dongyu, and Olivia Cooke are obvious choices for my own taste — but let’s be honest here: it’s Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’m not sure the late, great Hoffman has put a bad role onto film, and his peaks are higher than just about anyone in the century. His early PTA roles in Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia weren’t eligible here, but the list of candidates is just astounding. Synecdoche, New York, Punch Drunk Love, Moneyball, Capote, heck, even Mission Impossible: III, where he is just horrifyingly good. I had to pick one, and I went with what I think is my favorite: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Playing the role of pseudo-cult leader Lancaster Dodd, Hoffman is as incredible as always, capturing the attention of a room without even lifting a finger. The way Hoffman is able to play these magnetic man, while maintaining his signature level of oddity, is truly, truly unmatched. The supporting cast surrounding Hoffman in The Master is really excellent in their own performances, but this film operates on an ethereal level thanks, as always, to Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the very best to ever do it.
3. Maggie Cheung as Mrs. Chan, In the Mood for Love (2000)
So often when we discuss great acting, the word “physical” comes into play - the definition here is about nebulous, but in most cases, “physical” performances are those that really put the performers body on the line. The more obvious examples are silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but the more modern performances of Robert de Niro in Raging Bull, Christian Bale in The Machinist, and Russell Crowe in Gladiator are frequent mentions in these types of conversations. I want to introduce another angle into this discussion of physical performing, seen through the legendary work of Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love. Cheung, playing the wife of a never-home, likely-cheating husband, slinks through the steamy streets of 1960s Hong Kong with a physicality that is more subtle than it is arrogant, but captures attention all the same as the other actors mentioned. There have been great works dedicated to simply understanding the way that Maggie Cheung walks in this film - what might be the most basic thing an actor can do, Cheung still does it better. Her ever-changing wardrobe of qipaos emphasize the physicality even more, and the great Wong Kar-wai owes an awful lot of this film’s success to Cheung’s performance here.
2. Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, There Will be Blood (2007)
Number two on The Ringer’s list and number two on my list are the same, the undeniable Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will be Blood. I’m not sure there is much to add to the already full discussion about this legendary performance, it is not just one of, if not the best performance of this century, it is a truly all-time piece of acting put to film. Day-Lewis is, of course, known for these transformational roles, as the king of modern method acting, but Plainview in particular stands out. There is an immense madness in Daniel Plainview’s eyes in nearly every scene, and even though PTA writes his lead into some pretty devastatingly dire situations in this film (many of Plainview’s own making), the scale of success for this film is just broken when DDL steps on it. I am not sure how this list would change if I altered it to individual scenes only, but I’m positive there is not a single contender for Day-Lewis when considering the final bowling alley scene in There Will be Blood.
1. Renate Reinsve as Julie, The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Close readers of Cinema Soliloquy should have expected this, but please indulge me if not: Renate Reinsve is our greatest working actress. The roles that the Norwegian has taken this century are relatively sparse, with only thirteen credited roles at the time of this piece’s writing, but the quality supersedes that quantity by every margin. In her first film, Oslo, August 31st, Reinsve is only in a few scenes as a very minor character, but she rivals the aforementioned greatness of Anders Danielsen Lie in every way. In the ten years following, Reinsve had a few sparing roles in Norwegian films, but it was this, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, that rocketed her into stardom. Trier chose to cast the relatively unknown Reinsve in the lead role, one that carries a ridiculous amount of emotional weight for a film that is well past the normal limit for that type of baggage. What Reinsve does in response is, quite frankly, beyond comprehension: she is relatable, indescribably gorgeous, alluring, heart-wrenching, and, above all, could not be less likable. This character, Julie, makes about every wrong choice that one could make, and yet we root for her - because of Reinsve. Remarkably, the Norwegian took three years off of film acting after The Worst Person in the World’s release, coming back only to show that, yes, she is the best working actress in 2024’s A Different Man. With Trier’s new film Sentimental Value, starring Reinsve, releasing in theatres later this year, the world should be reminded once again that we need to cherish the immense ability of Renate Reinsve - this might be the best of the century so far, but she is far from done.
Tons of respect for this list. A mix of undeniable and globally recognized performances and then some that are obviously and brazenly personal. (I guess I will have to take another look at Olivia Cooke as an actress?) There are some towering figures absent here of course. Maybe not to everyone’s taste but moments when I thought: I am watching a performance for the ages: Viola Davis in both FENCES and MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, Cate Blanchett in TAR, Ethan Hawke in FIRST REFORMED, Florence Pugh in LITTLE WOMEN. And for me personally having suffered a traumatic event a few months before watching it I was blown away by Tom Hanks in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS — for the final scenes alone. Not even nominated. Talk about being taken for granted.
So is one rule that you can’t repeat from the other list? Because Naomi Watts’ performance is Mulholland Drive is one of one.