I’m afraid I owe this column to the L.A. wildfires, which put off the announcement of the Oscar nominations and gave me some extra time to put this feature together. Spare a thought (and some cash, if you have it) for the people out west, because it’s not just the celebrities who’ve lost their loved ones or their homes. In the meantime, here’s my list of the best lead performances of last year.
Colman Domingo
Like I mentioned before, Sing Sing isn’t much of a drama, but it’s redeemed by the level of its acting. Domingo plays the lead role as a man who keeps the prison theater program going but also works as the jailhouse lawyer for other inmates. The ups and downs of his struggle to free himself and feed his fellow prisoners’ souls is always watchable.
Cynthia Erivo
Her singing alone in Wicked would put her on this list, but much like Reneé Rapp did in Mean Girls, she takes a role that someone else already made iconic and makes it into something uniquely her own, a rebel whose attempts to assimilate only lead to grief. Elphaba’s story arc isn’t even over, but she’s already shaping up as a tragic figure of epic proportions.
Ralph Fiennes
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Conclave may remind you of all the memes that it spawned, but when I think of the movie, I think of Fiennes and the rectitude and bearing that he brings to his role as a cardinal who’s running the election of pope, as well as the gentleness that he brings to this political operator who’s dealing with some unsavory types in the Vatican.
Karla Sofía Gascón
In Emilia Pérez, she filmed her scenes as her male character before she underwent her final gender transition in real life, then filmed her scenes as Emilia afterwards. The movie may fall into some traps regarding the depiction of trans characters, but Gascón manages to transcend those with her performance. It’s hard to imagine a cisgender actress playing Emilia as well.
Lily Gladstone
She’s even better in Fancy Dance than she was in Killers of the Flower Moon. She portrays a contemporary woman who harasses local law enforcement and the FBI for not doing enough about her missing sister and still has to raise that sister’s child. You won’t soon forget her despair and her determination as she tries to get justice via a system that doesn’t care about her.
Josh Hartnett
M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap was ridiculous in all sorts of ways, but that only served to further highlight Hartnett’s excellence as a serial killer/girl dad who improvises his way like crazy out of the pop concert that has been set up entirely as a snare for him. His sweaty creativity shone through the craziness.
André Holland
Somehow, you feel like he might have created the paintings that his character executes in Exhibiting Forgiveness, with their scenes of serene Black suburban life and Black people obscured by white paint. He gives a masterclass as a man who wants to be a better father to his kid than his own father was to him, and has to face his past to get there.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste
I just ran my review of Hard Truths this week, so you can read that, or you can just go to the theater and see how she somehow makes this pill of a character pitiable by playing up the psychic troubles roiling beneath her surface.
KiKi Layne
I know that there are other actresses who could have played the title role in Dandelion, but it’s just hard to imagine. As a singer-songwriter who has burned herself out in Cincinnati, she’s memorable whether she’s singing “Over-the-Rhine” or blowing up at some hotel guest who is talking loudly on her phone during a performance. She co-wrote some of the movie’s songs as well.
Demi Moore
She had to turn 60 before she could star in The Substance, and while other sexagenarian actresses could have played that part, it needed someone who previously put so much stock in her hotness to play someone who goes to extreme lengths to regain it. Elisabeth Sparkle fails to heed her own advice: “Take care of yourself.”
Glen Powell
He brought his old-school movie-star charisma to Twisters this year, but the real show he made was in Hit Man. It’s true that a part that lets a character wear various disguises and put on different accents is always going to be a showcase, but he doesn’t need any of that in the climactic scene when his fake killer-for-hire tips off a client that the cops are listening in and orchestrates her getting out of it. He also co-wrote the movie, too.
Saoirse Ronan
It really is worth raising again the climactic montage of The Outrun, which is now available on YouTube. Her movements in coordination with the world around her are beautiful to watch, but she also brings the casual cruelty of a drunk who is both weepy and theatrical and who’s fun to party with right up until she becomes a nightmare. She blazes her way through this alcoholism drama.
Zendaya
She did more than creditable work in Dune: Part Two, but she goes on this list for the thwarted tennis champ she played in Challengers. Her Tashi Donaldson has all her needs taken care of and even has some fame through her husband, and yet she still projects the discontented air of a life unfulfilled because her knee wouldn’t cooperate. Tashi is terrible at times, but you understand why.
Honorable mention: Melissa Barrera, Your Monster; Kirsten Dunst, Civil War; Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, Challengers; Hugh Grant, Heretic; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tuesday; Mikey Madison, Anora; Ian McKellen, The Critic; Florence Pugh, We Live in Time; June Squibb, Thelma; Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Femme; John David Washington, The Piano Lesson.
