Every year film critics single out the best and worst movies released over the last 365 days, and highlight the best performances as well. And while there were a lot of great actors playing at the top of their game in 2014, CraveOnline wanted to go in a slightly different direction this year. These aren’t just the best actors of 2014, these are the actors who blew our freaking minds.
Check Out: The 11 Best Movie Villains of 2014
Whether they were in great movies or bad movies, these actors and actresses completely outdid themselves. Maybe we never knew they were incredible before, maybe they just raised the bar in an already impressive career. But either way, we’ll never look at them the same way again. These actors are destined for greatness – at least, we sure hope they are – and these are the films that seem likely to get them there. When we think of these actors from now on, these are the films we’ll think about.
So join us, won’t you? Let’s celebrate the actors and actresses who absolutely impressed us in 2014.
The 21 Actors Who Amazed Us in 2014:
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
21 Actors Who Amazed Us in 2014
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Scott Adsit
Highlight: Big Hero 6
The breakout character of the year? We think so. As Baymax, the inflatable nursing robot turned superhero in Big Hero 6, voice actor Scott Adsit helped create a special kind of sidekick, whose helpfulness and innocence is never erring, even in the face of danger. Baymax would almost be frustrating if he wasn't so adorable, but he's probably the most adorable character we saw in 2014, so we love him anyway.
Best Moment: Baymax has sprung a few leaks, so he patches himself up with Scotch tape. It takes a very long time. It's freaking cute.
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Patricia Arquette
Highlight: Boyhood
Boyhood is what it says in the title, the story of a boy, growing up. So we don't get to see very many moments of his mother outside of his youthful perspective, leading Patricia Arquette to give her very best performance, filling every moment with a rich inner world that justifies all of her actions, all of her anxiety, and all of the choices she makes that may be confusing to the child, the adolescent and finally the young man at the heart of the story.
Best Moment: The heartfelt goodbye as her son goes off to college could have been a cliché, but Arquette makes the moment almost impossibly genuine.
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Emily Blunt
Highlights: Edge of Tomorrow, Into the Woods
Emily Blunt has been on everyone's radar for over a decade, but she finally found not one but two fantastic roles in 2014. In Edge of Tomorrow she's one of the best action heroes of the year, a stone cold badass who looks just as comfortable killing aliens as she does killing Tom Cruise. And in Into the Woods she turns in a sublimely funny performance, showing off her lovely singing voice and spinning practically every line into comedy gold.
Best Moment: "You have... the coat."
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Chadwick Boseman
Highlight: Get On Up
Chadwick Boseman turned in a fine performance as Jackie Robinson in last year's 42, but it was his incredible portrayal of James Brown that will make him a legend. In Get On Up, Boseman captures all the famous mannerisms - and milks them for all the wonderful comedy he can - and his half delirious narration and slick musical performances practically stop the show. But his ability to keep all those qualities alive while delving into the darkest parts of James Brown's life story is the real miracle.
Best Moment: The look James Brown gives the camera after hitting his wife, adding a hint of shame to a man who seemingly never makes an apology.
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Rose Byrne
Highlight: Neighbors
The world of mainstream comedy has always been too much of a boy's club, but this year Rose Byrne was so damn funny she broke right into it and vandalized the clubhouse. Her performance in the frat house comedy Neighbors screams "Rose Byrne Was Here," playing the exact same level of immaturity as her co-stars without a hint of apology or condescension. She's the funniest part of an already very funny movie.
Best Moment: Her weird, unexpected enthusiasm for breaking up her neighbors' romantic relationships is half creepy, half hot, and all comedy.
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Essie Davis
Highlight: The Babadook
Horror movie performances don't often receive much critical acclaim. Perhaps that's because they're so often so primal - experiencing pure, abject fear - that audiences don't always pick up on a lot of nuance. But Essie Davis has more to work with in The Babadook, playing a single mother whose mind is going, perhaps out of stress, or perhaps because of a creepy new kind of haunting. She's not just frightened, she's frustrated and sad and pissed off and resentful and what's more, she's balancing every aspect of her complicated character with a horrifying and engaging performance.
Best Moment: Disciplining a child with a knife in your hand is never a good idea.
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Vin Diesel & Bradley Cooper
Highlight: Guardians of the Galaxy
There were plenty of memorable performances by CGI actors in live-action movies this year, but Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) were special. Groot is a living tree who can only communicate with three words - "I am Groot" - but who manages to convey everything he needs to convey, be it simple or complicated. And Rocket is a rich character full of bitterness and ingenuity. But more to the point, by the time Guardians of the Galaxy ends, the actual actors behind the performances have completely disappeared. They are Groot, and they are Rocket, and they are - as far as we were concerned - as "real" as anyone else.
Best Moment: Groot's final words.
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Mireille Enos
Highlight: Sabotage
Stuck in a movie that was, by anyone's account (and we even kind of liked it), a total mess, you can find a powder keg of a performance by Mireille Enos. The star of TV's "The Killing" has spent most of her big screen career playing the wife of more interesting male characters, but in Sabotage she unleashes a fury of sadism, self-involvement, sexual abandon and unrelenting violence. She's the standout star of an ensemble cast full of strong actors, giving a performance that feels dangerous and sleazy, frightening but undeniably alluring.
Best Moment: When your sniper fits comfortably into the trunk of a vehicle, the car chase possibilities are endless.
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Ralph Fiennes
Highlight: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ralph Fiennes isn't known for comedy, he's known for serious dramas about the Holocaust and serial killers. So when Wes Anderson tapped him to play the lead in The Grand Budapest Hotel, it was probably a stroke of genius. As the fusty but affable concierge of the title establishment, he revels in upper class propriety, always out for himself by giving himself entirely to others. It's the funniest performance of the year, from an actor who apparently needs to make more comedies.
Best Moment: M. Gustave doesn't just interview his young bellhop, he interviews his girlfriend as well. And yes, he's flirting. It's not like he can stop.
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Andrew Garfield
Highlight: The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Critics were unkind to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, because it's one of the worst movies of the year, but that's not Andrew Garfield's fault. Tucked inside the terrible plotting and awkward editing is a damn near perfect Spider-Man, likable and funny and uncertain of himself anyway. The opening car chase is "Grade A" Spider-Man, with our hero awkwardly quipping with the bad guys and performing feats of acrobatic insanity, and Garfield's chemistry with Emma Stone is top notch as well. It's too bad he's never had a movie to match him, or he could go down as one of the great movie superheroes.
Best Moment: Spider-Man steps in to protect a fellow nerd from bullies, and then offers to walk the kid home, geeking out about the child's science project.
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Eva Green
Highlights: 300: Rise of an Empire, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Another great performance in another bad movie, but Eva Green is so ludicrously charismatic in 300: Rise of an Empire that we still can't quite get over it. As the villainous Artemisia, she manipulates, decapitates and even copulates with the fury of a God, making all of us perk our heads up and take notice. And as the sociopathic femme fatale in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (also based on the works of Frank Miller), she boasted that same magnetism. Someone get Eva Green a better movie, right now.
Best Moment: Nobody hatefucks like Eva Green.
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Jake Gyllenhaal
Highlight: Nightcrawler
Jack Gyllenhaal has always been an underrated actor, but he blew us away with his instantly iconic performance in Nightcrawler. As a member of the lost generation, desperate to start a career at any cost (especially his soul), he embodies the worst case scenario of a climate we all know too well. He's a collection of self-serving self-help websites, all motivation and no consideration, and it seems like nothing can stop him from succeeding at his increasingly amoral goals. But he's such a slippery snake that we almost - almost - want him to get away with it.
Best Moment: He's already blackmailed his producer, played by Rene Russo, into a dinner date. But he doesn't stop there.
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Tom Hardy
By now Tom Hardy seems to have solidified his place among the best actors of his generation, and his two performances in 2014 are likely to go down as some of his best. In The Drop he plays Bob, a mild-mannered bartender bullied on all sides into taking action to save the life of his dog, and with very little dialogue he pulls us into his plight (culminating in one of the best scenes of the year). And in Locke he's all dialogue, playing the entire film from the driver's seat of a car, revealing a complex series of life-altering decisions through conversations on his cell phone. And somehow he makes that absolutely captivating.
Best Moment: What Bob Does.
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Scarlett Johansson
Highlights: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Under the Skin, Lucy
It was a great year for Scarlett Johansson, starring in one of the most successful blockbusters of the year, one of the most acclaimed art house films of the year and a film that divided critics but made a huge splash at the box office. She's great in all of them, finally making her superhero her own, embodying the voyeuristic desires of her fans and even the next evolution of human consciousness. She has finally emerged as a real superstar, and we're incredibly happy that she's here.
Best Moment: Her mysterious sexual predator in Under the Skin is finally about to have sex for the first time, but something's... wrong.
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David Oyelowo
Highlights: Selma, A Most Violent Year
David Oyelowo has been on the periphery of stardom for years now, but with Selma he turns in one of the greatest performances of the year. His portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. captures the power, the weakness and even the outright danger of the Civil Rights leader in a way never before captured on film. His supporting performance as an ambitious District Attorney in A Most Violent Year was quiet by comparison, but no less intense.
Best Moment: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s reaction when he learns his wife met with Malcolm X is absolutely fascinating.
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Eddie Redmayne
Highlights: The Theory of Everything
We never knew Eddie Redmayne had a performance like The Theory of Everything inside of him. Although always a respectable actor, he earned newfound respect for playing Prof. Stephen Hawking in every stage of his degenerative disease, capturing the complex physicality of the character and finally communicating beautifully with almost no movement at all.
Best Moment: Pretty much everything except the awful fantasy sequence.
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J.K. Simmons
Highlight: Whiplash
Fletcher, the seemingly mad conductor pushing his students past their breaking point in Whiplash, is a hurricane of a character. His actions and his ethos combined make him a standout creation in a year that already had plenty of them, but thanks to J.K. Simmons - turning his famous fury into something unexpectedly complicated - he's probably the one we'll take with us to the grave. Fletcher emerges as one of cinema's great villains AND one of its great heroes over the course of Damien Chazelle's challenging, frightening drama.
Best Moment: "Not my tempo."
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Dan Stevens
Highlight: The Guest
The former "Downton Abbey" star couldn't have picked a better role to break out into features. Dan Stevens absolutely shines in The Guest as "David," a soldier visiting the family of his fallen comrade who puts his violent training to good use as he slaughters their suburban enemies. Two things are obvious about "David." He obviously really cares about these people, and he's obviously hiding a horrible secret. And when we find out what that secret is, it just sends him spiraling off into delectable directions, half Michael Myers and half Terminator. Stevens is absolutely irresistible as the sexy, horrifying, enigmatic hero/villain of The Guest, and we hope to see more of both the actor and this character in the very near future.
Best Moment: When "David" has to murder someone he actually cares about, just because he has to. He's almost, but not entirely, a human being.
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Channing Tatum
Highlights: 22 Jump Street, Foxcatcher
We've always liked Channing Tatum, and he's been pretty good in films that didn't stretch his range like Magic Mike and White House Down. But he really outdid himself in 2014. In 22 Jump Street he turns in one of the funniest performances of the year, and in Foxcatcher he turns in one of the most subtle. As the browbeaten Olympic wrestler torn between his brother and an eerily pushy new father figure, he steals the movie away from the heavily mannered Steve Carell, often with just body language and puppy dog eyes to work with. He's heading for great things. We're certain of it.
Best Moment: "You actually high-fived Schmidt for fucking your daughter?! Holy shit! Oh my God, this is... It's really not that funny."
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Christoph Waltz
Highlights: The Zero Theorem, Big Eyes
Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz. We've already come to expect great things from him, but he really stretched his range in 2014. In Terry Gilliam's underseen The Zero Theorem he plays a pathetic loser challenged with proving the meaninglessness of the universe, only to accidentally find meaning on the way, and he nails it. And in Big Eyes he plays the shrewd, disgusting shyster Walter Keane, whose flamboyant demeanor hides grotesque insecurity all too well. Both films are weirdly perfect for Waltz, so famous for playing absolute confidence, but both roles subvert what we've come to expect from the actor and use his strengths to convey uncomfortable weakness.
Best Moment: When Walter Keane crosses the line from subtle psychological abuse into pure nightmare territory. Shivers down the spine.
