The Best of the 2010s: Top 20 Performances

I will be brief here in the introduction because I will go on far too long below. The best performances of the decade will not appear to have much in common on the surface. The characters and films and performers differ wildly, and the themes they explore differ more wildly than that. There are Oscar-winning portraits in searing historical dramas alongside irreverent comedic mischief and everything in between. Some of these performers were introduced to us in the 2010s, while others have been around for decades, but they all left us with work that will stand the test of time.

Before we get to the list, here are 10 other performances who landed just outside the top 20 for me (in alphabetical order): Olivia Colman in The Favourite; Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia; Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave; Charlotte Gainsbourg in Nymphomaniac; Brendan Gleeson in Calvary; Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler; Naomi Harris in Moonlight; Michael Keaton in Birdman; Carey Mulligan in Shame; and Brad Pitt in Moneyball.

The only rule I had was to limit the list to one performance per actor, which was difficult in several cases, and I made note of other performances I considered when putting together this list. Enjoy.

20. Tiffany Haddish as Dina in Girl’s Trip

Comedy stars have a way of breaking onto the scene seeming fully formed, forcing audiences to wonder, “Where has this person been?” But it is never that easy, and Haddish is just the latest example. She had been working the comedy circuit for more than a decade and garnering supporting roles in film and television for years before the blockbuster success of Girl’s Trip. Her journey to the spotlight was long, but from the moment she bursts onto the screen in director Malcolm D. Lee’s uproarious comedy, you understand immediately how she wound up there.

Dina is as fully realized a comic creation as we have gotten in a generation. She is to the film what Carl Spackler is to Caddyshack, the reason to keep going back, again and again. While Girl’s Trip is filled to the brim with wonderfully funny set pieces, the moments when Haddish is allowed to be her flamboyantly comic self are those that stick in your mind. Just watch this film and try to look at a grapefruit the same way ever again.

19. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Ramona Flowers is an impossible character to pull off, or at least, she should be. She is both fantasy and all too human. She is a self-absorbed nerd’s idea of the perfect woman, but she is also her own person. Director Edgar Wright asks Winstead to be both at once throughout his energetic graphic novel adaptation, and Winstead turns the high-wire act into high art.

Though Michael Cera’s Scott Pilgrim perhaps sees her one dimensionally, as a prize to be won, Winstead never plays her that way. Winstead’s Ramona is a complex mix of pain and hope, waiting neither to be saved nor won but rather earned. She knows who she is and embraces the flaws and imperfections that have brought her to this point. Winstead had an interesting decade and deserved more than many of the roles she received, and the proof is right here, in Technicolor magic.

18. Andy Serkis as Caesar in the Planet of the Apes series

Maybe this is a bit of cheat as we are considering all three films in the Apes reboot series as a single performance, but point to another character in any franchise that is as well developed and intimately observed as Caesar. Across Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes, Serkis charts Caesar’s growth from orphaned lab experiment to reluctant warrior to commanding leader with a grace and dignity rarely given to human characters, let alone motion-capture chimps.

It is a travesty that none of these films won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, but it is perhaps sadder still that Serkis’ work was not recognized. Actors have long feared visual effects technology would make their performances obsolete, but with Caesar, Serkis proves the opposite to be true. It takes real talent, skill, and commitment to bring to life a character this vibrant through layers of digital makeup. Famed as well for his motion-capture Gollum and King Kong in Peter Jackson’s films, Serkis reaches new heights in the Planet of the Apes series, pointing the way forward for the blending of art and technology.

17. Florence Pugh as Dani in Midsommar

(see also: Little Women)

This was my introduction to Pugh. I missed her acclaimed turn in Lady Macbeth and skipped Outlaw King and Fighting with My Family. No reason. There are just a lot of movies to see. But as soon as Pugh showed up in Ari Aster’s psychological horror show Midsommar, every performance of hers shot to the top of the must-see list. This is earth-shaking work, and in a genre that not only allows for but embraces hysterics, Pugh reaches for something deeper and grander.

Dani is a victim of everyone in her life. She is tormented and abused by those closest to her, and she suffers it gladly, thankful for any scrap of connection. Midsommar is the story of her escaping this darkness and literally stepping into the light. Pugh embodies this transformation so thoroughly we barely notice it happening. In every pained cry and private moment, Pugh takes the opportunity to show us the woman Dani is hiding from the world, and by the end, we understand why she can hide no longer.

16. Peter Bogdanovich as Brooks Otterlake in The Other Side of the Wind

Think about the level of difficulty inherent in what Bogdanovich is doing in Orson Welles’ final film. At this point in their careers, Bogdanovich is a talented director who has surpassed his mentor, Welles, in commercial success and popular acclaim, if not necessarily artistic merit. Welles cannot get a film financed and is living in Bogdanovich’s home, subsisting primarily on what little good will he has not squandered. And in The Other Side of the Wind, Welles asks Bogdanovich essentially to play out this personal and professional drama on the big screen. Bogdanovich, as ever, is game.

Brooks Otterlake has all the success in the world, all the fame, money, and women he could want, but he feels obliged to kneel at the feet of the master, played here by John Huston as Jake Hannaford. He is desperate for Jake’s approval and acceptance, and Bogdanovich plays the slow realization that he is never going to receive it as a Shakespearean tragedy. He is wounded, angry, and bitter but also strident and petulant. Finally, when Brooks asks Jake, “What did I do wrong, daddy?” he is resigned. By this point, so is Bogdanovich, as the shadows grows ever larger in death, of both Jake and Welles.

15. Adèle Exarchopolous as Adèle in Blue Is the Warmest Color

It is difficult now to discuss Blue Is the Warmest Color without addressing its director’s misconduct (and his generally crumby subsequent output), which casts a shadow over this film. That is why you will not see it cropping up on many decade’s-end lists, despite its Palme d’Or win and rightful critical acclaim. However, while the film has perhaps become, what the kids refer to as, #problematic, what remains is the sterling lead performance of Adèle Exarchopolous.

While scene partner Léa Seydoux, who went on to larger international fame, is remarkable as well, the film belongs to Exarchopolous. Yes, the graphic sex scenes took courage and strength and all that for an actress who was not yet 20 when the film premiered, but more than that, watch the way Exarchopolous eats spaghetti. Watch the way she dances. Watch the way she interacts with people she knows, with people she doesn’t. Exarchopolous uses every moment to craft a life that feels both mundane and unique, universal and specific.

14. Michael Shannon as Curtis in Take Shelter

(see also: 99 Homes and The Shape of Water)

Michael Shannon has been around for years, which is to say Michael Shannon has been knocking it out of the park for years. I missed the early boat on Shannon. I remember him as a menacing presence in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead and a voice of truth amid delusions in Revolutionary Road. But the first time I remember thinking he was going to be special – or in fact, was already special – was in Jeff Nichols’ masterful surrealist drama about paranoia and mental illness.

Shannon inhabits the mind and spirit of a good family man who just wants to do right by those he loves but must battle the demons clouding his mind, such that he cannot see the right thing. By now, we all know Shannon can play scary or intimidating. What he does so brilliantly here, though, is to take a man who could be your neighbor or drinking buddy and break him down to his wounded soul. Curtis is not scary because he is large or angry. He is scary because, as Shannon shows us, he cannot trust his own mind and fears what that mistrust could force him to do.

13. Emmanuelle Riva as Anne in Amour

Riva was already 32 when most of the world met her in Alain Resnais’ 1959 New Wave masterpiece Hiroshima, Mon Amour. She was then with us steadily for the next 58 years, until she died in January 2017, a month shy of her 90th birthday. In the final decade of her life, she gifted us with the capstone to a brilliant career, a stunning, heartbreaking turn in a modern masterpiece, this time simply called Amour, from German provocateur Michael Haneke.

Anne is an older woman but full of life and love and vibrancy. All of this is stolen from her when she suffers a stroke, and for the rest of the film, Riva guides the audience through Anne’s slow, painful deterioration into invalidity. In the early passages, Riva is able to show us who this woman once was, and her transformation into a living ghost is haunting because we see the light fade from Anne’s eyes. Riva has no vanity and no timidity in showing us a death, not of the body but the soul.

12. Michael Fassbender as Frank in Frank

(see also: Twelve Years a Slave, Shame, Prometheus & Alien: Covenant, and Macbeth)

I am probably on the record somewhere on this site calling Fassbender the best actor of his generation. I stand by that. There are contenders for the crown, many on this list (DiCaprio, Shannon, Phoenix, etc.), but the depth and breadth of the roles Fassbender has disappeared into speak for themselves. It took every ounce of will power not to name his devastating turn in Steve McQueen’s Shame here, but we have enough pain and sorrow. And I find equally impressive the profound joy and wonder Fassbender imbues the title character with in Lenny Abrahamson’s musical-on-the-sly, Frank.

The character of Frank has all the hallmarks of a gimmick. First of all, you cannot see his face for nearly the entire runtime of the film. In lesser hands, he would be a cipher, an unknowable accumulation of tics and gesticulations, hidden behind a literal mask. But in Fassbender’s hands, he is a soulful artist, a wounded creature who has built a home with other wounded creatures. Instead of repelling, his giant mascot-like head draws people into his orbit, like a star. When he guilelessly asks whether we can see him smiling, we know he is because Fassbender makes us feel it, even without seeing it.

11. Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie

(see also: Black Swan)

The trick to Pablo Larrain’s magnificent film Jackie is that it is a mood sustained over its entire 100 minutes. It walks a razor’s edge in portraying the first lady’s state of mind in the days following her husband’s assassination. A hair one way, and the film becomes mawkish pablum. The other, and you have overwrought melodrama. Instead, we have this strange, haunting tone poem about tragedy, grief, and a kind of stardom. And at the center of it all, tasked with balancing these seemingly incompatible goals, is Portman.

Few actresses her age have been in the spotlight as long as Portman, and she brings those years of world weariness to a Jackie Kennedy whose life has been irreparably altered. In moments that have been seared into the public consciousness – like that of widow in her blood-stained pink jacket – Portman is able to communicate all of the conflicting feelings and impulses that are flying through her mind all at once. She gives us a full picture of the private person and public persona that made Jackie O such a fascinating character on the world stage for generations.

10. Yana Novikova as Anya in The Tribe

We have seen great silent performances before. Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown. Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water. Of course, Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God. But Novikova’s performance in Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s harrowing The Tribe is the only one that forces us into stunned silence along with the character. Born deaf, Novikova is absolutely electric as a girl at a deaf school forced to trade her body for safety but who will not allow herself to be compromised or downtrodden.

There are reports of people fainting during the film’s most difficult scene, which revolves around Anya – and I witnessed the phenomenon firsthand at a screening I attended – but these reports, however true, are sensationalist. They dull the impact of Novikova’s work, which is breathtaking in this controversial scene but only succeeds because the actress has made Anya a fully realized character in everything before this. Novikova makes us care about Anya’s pain, her struggle, her release, and it is for this reason that no matter how much we may want to, we cannot look away.

9. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street

(see also: Shutter Island, The Revenant, and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood)

This was basically Leo’s decade. He made just eight films over the past 10 years, and J. Edgar is the only flop among them, though even that made $84 million on a $35 million budget. Apart from that, he made megahit after megahit for celebrated auteur after celebrated auteur. Let’s just look at the list: Inception with Christopher Nolan; Shutter Island with Martin Scorsese; J. Edgar with Clint Eastwood; Django Unchained with Quentin Tarantino; The Great Gatsby with Baz Luhrman; The Wolf of Wall Street with Scorsese; The Revenant with Alejandro G. Iñárritu; and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood with Tarantino again.

I would argue each performance is better than the last, culminating in his career-best work in Once Upon a Time. But it is his sleazy stockbroker, Jordan Belfort, that I keep returning to in my mind. DiCaprio has been a serious, capital “A” Actor for nearly his entire career, and though brilliant, he is often controlled and contained. There is nothing to contain him in The Wolf of Wall Street, and he embraces that freedom with all the energy of … well, a Wall Street bro with too much damn money. DiCaprio not only chews the scenery but burns the set to the ground, and when this loathsome creature tells us he’s not leaving, we rejoice at the hubris but revel in the audacity.

8. Sarit Larry as Nira in The Kindergarten Teacher

How painful it must be to see potential wasted. How burdensome it must be to recognize talent unappreciated. Finally, how horrific to see that which you love profaned and mocked. This is Nira’s tragedy in Nadav Lapid’s superlative The Kindergarten Teacher. She is surrounded all day by children, who are incapable of understanding the beauty around them, then goes home to a husband who willfully ignores that same beauty. She has the soul of a poet but not the talent – and then, she meets Yoav.

Larry translates all this pain and pleasure and poignancy with a quiet dignity for which the world Nira inhabits has no time or need. She shows us what happens as the ignorant philistines around her chip away at her sense of self and Nira is forced to cling harder and harder to the one pure thing she sees. The actress portrays Nira not as a woman in the midst of a breakdown – though she very well may be – but in the throes of an awakening. And in her struggle to rise, we finally see just what about all this is so profound.

7. Viola Davis as Rose Lee Maxson in Fences

(see also: Widows)

Davis is one of the finest actors working in Hollywood today. She has proven that time and again and has never given a poor performance, nor has she taken a scene off, even in substandard material, such as Suicide Squad. Unfortunately, the material she is given so rarely rises to the level of Davis’ talent. This is not Davis’ fault. Rather, it is the fault of an industry that seems to have little use for middle-aged women and even less for middle-aged women of color. So, for times like this, you just want to throw your hands up to the cinema gods and say thank you.

Rose Lee Maxson is one of the great female characters in modern American theater, perhaps even the greatest. That is thanks to August Wilson. This performance, however, is one of the greatest of the decade thanks to Davis. As a woman constantly let down by the men in her life, trying to hold on to some piece of the future she envisioned, Davis is stunning. She won an Oscar for her performance but as Supporting Actress. There is nothing about Rose that is supporting, and Davis knows it, which is the strength of the performance. Rose has been in the background far too long, and Davis will not allow it for one second more.

6. Denzel Washington as Troy Maxson in Fences

(see also: Flight)

The Fences ensemble is magnificent, from Stephen Henderson and Jovan Adepo to Mykelti Williamson and Saniyya Sidney. But at its core, August Wilson’s masterpiece is a two-hander. It is Rose and Troy. You cannot have one without the other. So, of course, we cannot have here Viola Davis’ Rose without Washington’s Troy. They are perfectly matched performers working in perfect harmony, even when their scenes are specifically about discord. It is a thrilling pas de deux that we are privileged to be able to sit back and watch.

All of this is perhaps made more impressive by the fact that Washington is directing the whole production. Washington’s place on the Mount Rushmore of modern actors is secure. He has won multiple Academy Awards, headlined major blockbusters, and starred in one great film after another. Fences, then, is evidence of the restless artistic spirit that resides within Washington. He has nothing left to prove, but still he performs Troy as if everything depends on it. He brings Wilson’s creation ferociously to life, portraying a man who has everything he needs if only he could see it. Washington not only sees it, but he appreciates it, and he is gracious enough to share it.

5. Charlotte Rampling as Kate Mercer in 45 Years

Kate is older but vital. She is a retired teacher. She takes her dog for walks in the countryside and enjoys spending quiet mornings at the kitchen table with her husband of 45 years. When we meet her, she is planning a blowout anniversary party to celebrate that lengthy union. Then, writer-director Andrew Haigh pulls the rug out from underneath her entire life, and she is left to question what is true, what is not, and what, if anything, it all means.

Rampling is the life force that drives 45 Years. She is its broken heart and its clear mind. She is both the storm and the eye. Rampling draws on Kate’s lifetime of experiences and joys and sorrows and regrets and brings all of it to the surface. Rampling focuses Kate’s anger and pain in ways that are too raw to watch but too powerful to avoid. Kate’s life crumbles as her perception of the world around her is altered irrevocably, which makes her struggle almost entirely internal. Rampling makes this internal struggle felt all the way up to her final, defiant gesture.

4. Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave

(see also: Us)

It is easy to forget how late into Solomon Northup’s story Patsey arrives. But when she does, the impact she leaves behind is that of a crater, and Nyong’o is the asteroid that brings this devastation upon the story. How to talk about Patsey without talking about her abuse, her suffering, her torment? She is the favored slave of a cruel master, which is worse than being nothing because she knows all eyes are on her. It is her unfortunate circumstance that she refuses to have her spirit broken, and when she demands to be clean, we feel every ounce of her pain and we feel it physically, viscerally.

This was Nyong’o’s feature film debut, and it is shocking to realize that she made just 10 films in the decade, three of them Star Wars sequels in which she appeared as a CGI creation. This is to say that despite the absolute force of nature she clearly is and always has been, we have yet to see the full extent of her powers on the big screen. Her performance as Patsey is possibly one of the greatest film debuts of all time, it was awarded an Oscar, and it is likely we are still undervaluing the performance and Nyong’o as a performer. Hopefully, we do not make that mistake in the next decade.

3. Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya

(see also: The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood)

If there is justice in Hollywood – for the most part, we know there is not – Robbie will be allowed to do anything she wants over the next decade. Maybe that decision will not be up to Hollywood, though, as Robbie has proven smart enough, savvy enough, and talented enough to turn her passion projects into reality. This is why we are getting in 2020 a Birds of Prey movie for which Robbie will serve as a producer. This is why there is a Tank Girl movie and a Barbie movie in the pipeline. And, this is why we have this rollicking film and this transcendent performance.

Robbie accomplishes the nearly impossible as Tonya Harding in this film, showing us whole new shades of a public figure we thought we knew and creating a character where the culture had decided on a caricature. With this performance, Robbie fundamentally changes our shared understanding of one of the strangest moments in recent American history. The culture demanded a monster, and the media narrative offered up Harding. Robbie’s performance is a corrective that does not whitewash the person or the history but deepens our sympathies with a weapon more powerful than any blunt object: truth.

2. Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd in The Master

(see also: A Most Wanted Man)

Sometimes you just have to say what’s on your mind, and what’s on my mind is: What a damn shame. I am not the first and I will not be the last to wonder aloud what other performances Hoffman had in him, what future works were forthcoming, what greatness was denied by his death in February 2014 at the age of 46. It was a devastating loss to his family and friends. It was a gut punch to the film and theater communities in which he thrived. It left everyone searching for ways to express their grief and their appreciation. For those of us who knew him only through his work, then, what better expression than taking in perhaps the crowning achievement of his career.

Hoffman’s collaborations with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson were frequent and varied, with each artist bringing out something beautiful and brilliant in the other. They saved their finest creation for their final work together, though of course, neither knew it would be such. The cult leader Lancaster Dodd is thoughtful and intense but also remarkably boisterous and alive. His appetites outstrip his ability to satisfy them. He thinks he is searching for answers, but he is only searching for confirmations. And what he wants confirmed more than anything is his own greatness. He is an open book in which each new page is a contradiction. Only Hoffman could do this, and there will never be another like him.

1. Joaquin Phoenix as Freddy Quell in The Master

(see also: I’m Still Here, Inherent Vice, and Joker)

Freddy Quell is the mewling, animalistic id to Lancaster Dodd’s superego. He is the part of us that knows we are broken and the part that refuses to be fixed. For long stretches, The Master is a two-man show, and perhaps the only actor capable of matching Philip Seymour Hoffman scene for scene was Phoenix. He embodies the brooding intensity and childlike mischievousness with equal vigor, portraying a man who will walk endlessly back and forth between two points simply because he is told to but who will also fly into a rage at the slightest provocation. He is base and incurious, a reflection of our worst selves, but probably closer to us than the heroes we so idolize.

Phoenix’s unconventional manner and strange public persona are well documented by this point. We have all read the stories of him being difficult to work with, refusing to answer questions in interviews, and walking off set if it suits him. We all lived through the insane (and, to my mind, glorious) experiment that was I’m Still Here. Society can be to quick to excuse the behaviors of difficult geniuses, exempting them from common humanity because of their gifts. This is wrong-headed and should not be so. But Phoenix seems genuine when he insists he is an artist whose only wish is to do the best work he can. He will tell you himself that he does not believe art should be a competition, but competition or not, he is winning.

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Check back throughout the week as we continue with our Best of the Decade project, continuing with the Top 20 Moments and the Top 20 Films of the 2010s.