Actors everywhere, now is the time to declare “Aaaaand scene!” and take your bows. We’re just about done with the calendar year of 2015, pretty much every film has come out (or at least screened for us critics), and you’ve earned yourself a handful of accolades. Acting is a tough job, no matter what the naysayers say, and to those of you who have touched our hearts, tickled our funny bones and scared us crapless, we here at Crave would like to take this opportunity to salute you.
Related: The 15 Most Underrated Films of 2015
It’s been a strange year, to put it mildly, with excellent films debuting across a wide range of genres and superb performances sometimes emerging from unexpected places. While many hoped that Mad Max: Fury Road would stand up to its three classic predecessors, few predicted that it would be one of the best movies of the year and introduce us to a new and exciting female empowerment archetype for this and future generations. In the world of serious dramas, a biopic about controversial rap act N.W.A. turned out to feature one of the most impressive ensemble casts of the year. And was it just us or was Eddie Redmayne SPECTACULAR as the campy supervillain in Jupiter Ascending?
Oh right, that literally was just us. Okay, but look, time is going to tell on that one. Give Jupiter Ascending another chance a few years down the road. Redmayne could very well be the next Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
In any case, it was incredibly difficult to pin down the best performances of 2015, at least in the realm of motion pictures, but we stand by the following 15 incredible human actors (and two non-human actors), who made this year especially magical. Their work will stick with us for many years to come, and we are celebrating them here, unranked, in alphabetical order.
There were more than 15 great performances in 2015, of course, but we had to cut the list off somewhere. So we would also like to take this opportunity to praise our runners-up: Ellen Dorrit Peterson in Blind, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in Carol, Kevin Bacon in Cop Car, Chiara D’Anna and Sidse Babett Knudsen in The Duke of Burgundy, Jason Segel in The End of the Tour, Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs, Ryan Reynolds in The Voices, and Michael Caine and Rachel Weisz in Youth.
The 15 Greatest Movie Performances of 2015:
Photo: Universal Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 15 Best Performances of 2015
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Matt Damon, 'The Martian'
Matt Damon carries half of Ridley Scott's sci-fi drama all by his lonesome, trapped in a space suit and a confined space station on the surface red planet, talking to the camera about science. And he's absolutely riveting, grounding the occasionally heady material in good humor and impressive gumption.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
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Tom Hardy, 'The Revenant'
Leonardo DiCaprio gets to do all the Oscar-friendly suffering, but Tom Hardy steals The Revenant as the cause of (most of) our hero's pain. As the fur trapper John Fitzgerald, the actor seems to have entirely replaced his humanity with pragmatic justifications for selfishness and violence. We believe Fitzgerald believes he's doing the right thing, and that's what makes his performance so shocking.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
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Oscar Isaac, 'Ex Machina'
Oscar Isaac is not your typical billionaire tech genius in Alex Garland's Ex Machina. He's bullish, physical, boozed out of his gourd. He think he's just invented artificial intelligence and he knows that if that's the case, that makes him God. Isaac embodies the flawed deity with pitch perfect force and condescension. What an incredible, fascinating jerk.
Photo: A24
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O'Shea Jackson Jr., 'Straight Outta Compton'
O'Shea Jackson doesn't have the flashiest role in the impressive NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton. He doesn't get to yell half his dialogue or die a tragic death on camera. What he does do is play his own father, Ice Cube, and completely get away with it. He captures the anger and the need to express it, he embraces the onset of maturity. He makes us forget we're not watching Ice Cube. He makes this role his own, and anchors the film's talented ensemble.
Photo: Universal Pictures
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Michael B. Jordan, 'Creed'
Sylvester Stallone is great in Creed, but after seven films in this beloved franchise he'd better be. Making a much bigger impression is Michael B. Jordan as the son of deceased champion Apollo Creed, striving to make a name for himself without capitalizing on his actual name. Coogler's film doesn't go as deeply into this Creed's head as you might think, but Johnson lays it all bare for us anyway. We see his drive, his frailty, his strength, and we want to see more. A lot more.
Photo: Warner Bros.
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Anna Kendrick, 'The Last Five Years'
Many critics and audience members missed Richard LaGravenese's heart-wrenching musical when it debuted in February. They didn't just miss a great film, they missed Anna Kendrick's greatest performance to date. As the failed actress wife of a successful novelist, she balances on a tricky line between support and jealousy, love and resentment. It's the most complex romance of the year, and she does the entire film singing her heart out, never missing a note, putting most of the other musical movie actors from the last few decades to shame.
Photo: RADiUS-TWC
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Brie Larson, 'Room'
Brie Larson has a lot to work with in Room, the story of a young woman kidnapped for years and forced to raise her son in a shed. She tries to make her son happy until the time comes to explain why he must be scared. She risks everything to gain everything, in a way that few characters ever do. Larson breaks out here, delivering a rich and emotionally ragged performance that seems perpetually trapped between hope and horror. And since the film is told from her son's perspective, she has to do a lot of it without actually explaining what's really going on inside of her mind.
Photo: A24 Films
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Tom Noonan, 'Anomalisa'
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's stop-motion animated drama stars David Thewliss as a weary man, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a woman who catches his eye, and Tom Noonan as every other human being on the planet, ever. There's a reason for this (which should not be spoiled) but regardless of the rationale it's a difficult and bizarre request to make of any actor. Noonan is up to the challenge, using subtle changes of inflection and pitch to convey distinctive individuals in a world where everyone sounds the same, and may as well be the same person too.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
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Charlotte Rampling, '45 Years'
Always brilliant, but rarely recognized, Charlotte Rampling gave one of the finest performances of her career in 45 Years. Andrew Haigh's film tells the story of a married woman who, on the eve of her momentous anniversary, discovers that her husband may have been thinking about another woman all along. And yet, after 45 years, does it matter? Rampling conveys all the confusion and anger and love and history in little looks, tiny twitches, and tells you everything you need to know and then some. Tom Courtenay plays her somewhat befuddled husband, and he gives an exceptional performance too.
Photo: Artificial Eye
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Saoirse Ronan, 'Brooklyn'
It's been years since Saoirse Ronan had a role this good, but she doesn't in a step in Brooklyn. As an Irish immigrant settling into a confusing, lonely life across the sea, she skillfully crafts an entire narrative within the gaps of her heart. There's not much plot to John Crowley's film, just a homesick girl who's tempted in one direction and then another, and Saoirse Ronan's impossibly expressive portrayal keeps the whole movie riveting, even when she's only doing menial tasks. Rarely has paperwork seemed so potent.
Photo: Fox Searchlight
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Mark Ruffalo, 'Spotlight'
The whole cast is excellent in Tom McCarthy's slick and powerful journalism drama, about a team of Boston journalists who uncovered the scope of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse cover-up. But as real-life reporter Mike Rezendes, it's Ruffalo whose response probably mirrors our own. His passion segues into horror and then finally into doubt. He articulates our sense of betrayal, and our despair for a future in which we can trust anybody ever again. The most emotional speeches in Spotlight belong to the victims, but it's Ruffalo's reactions that keep us connected to the investigation as well as the tragedy, and his performance is (as usual) masterful.
Photo: Open Road Films
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Sarah Snook, 'Predestination'
To describe exactly what Sarah Snook goes through in Predestination would be impossible without completely ruining this fantastic science fiction film. Suffice it to say we meet her in a bar, where she's playing a man, and then flashback to the past, where she's playing a woman. And where it goes from there is a roller coaster ride for both the audience and Snook, who somehow manages to live her whole life and at least one or two others, constantly evolving and always selling this complex tell for all the genuine emotion it's worth. It's the sort of performance that should have made the actress one of Hollywood's biggest stars, but didn't because Predestination came out in January, so hardly anybody saw her in it.
Photo: Pinnacle Films
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Charlize Theron, 'Mad Max: Fury Road'
"Mad" Max Rockatansky may have had his name in the title, but the year's best action movie belonged to Furiosa. In one of her mightiest performances, Charlize Theron plowed through the desert driving a souped-up big rig, venting her rage on an unending barrage of mindless thugs who want to keep her, and the enslaved "wives" she has liberated, under their warlord's thumb. She cannot be stopped, she won't take any shit, and when push finally comes to shove she only wobbles a little before she jumps back into the fray. She's a new and important kind of hero, and Charlize Theron presented her fully formed to the world.
Photo: Warner Bros.
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Alicia Vikander, 'The Danish Girl'
In the melodramatic Oscar bait weepie The Danish Girl, Eddie Redmayne discovers he's a transexual many decades before anyone knew exactly what that meant. But although he gets the biggest "for your consideration" scenes, Alicia Vikander is who really makes Tom Hooper's drama work. As the wife of a man who was always a woman, she wrestles with seemingly impossible revelations. She's supportive until it breaks her, and she struggles until she realizes she can also break her husband. She's a rock who doesn't know how to be a rock, and she keeps this otherwise maudlin affair steady and worthwhile. No easy task.
Photo: Focus Features
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Alicia Vikander, 'Ex Machina'
The only actor to appear twice on our list this year, because 2015 was - in many ways - the year of Alicia Vikander. But even if she had only appeared in Ex Machina she would have been a revelation. As an artificially intelligent robot, we view her as her male creators/captors view her. As an object, and possibly a victim, and possibly a threat. What we never get a good look at is who Ava, the automaton, really is. Vikander plays the enigma, she plays her male co-stars against each other, and she conveys an impossible mindset like it's the most natural thing in the world. No one has ever thought like Ava thinks, and it's scary and riveting. Only Vikander knows her secrets, and she hints at the constantly, never telling.
Photo: A24
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Honorable Mention: Body and Luke, 'White God'
Our one honorable mention isn't disqualified because he's a dog, but rather because it's two dogs. Body and Luke were two of the canine actors who starred as Hagen in Kornél Mundruczó's brutal allegory White God, in which a beloved mutt is released onto the streets and repeatedly abused until, in a strange twist, he leads an uprising against his human oppressors. It sounds broader than it is; most of the film is dedicated to the violence we inflict upon our animals, and it's realistic and shocking. Body and Luke, dividing the duties between them, become every dog and then an all-new breed of vengeful spirit. You'll be amazed at how much they can convey with their sad eyes and bitter fangs.
Photo: Magnolia Pictures
