10. Haley Lu Richardson as Casey in “Columbus”
Having slept a bit on her breakout turn in “The Edge Of Seventeen” last year (and her smaller role in “Split” too), seeing Haley Lu Richardson in “Columbus” was an utter revelation. On the page, it feels like Casey, a young woman stuck in her hometown looking after her recovering addict mother who forms a friendship with Jin (John Cho), could have felt like a wish-fulfillment caricature of precociousness. But in Richardson’s hands, she never feels anything other than utterly real, someone who’s happy with her unconsidered life, and yet whose wasted potential threatens to burn a hole in the ground wherever she walks.
9. Tiffany Haddish as Dina in “Girls Trip”
Once every few years, you get a performance in a big mainsteam comedy that feels like an explosion, that instantly creates a star, and will shift the genre on its axis for some time to come: think of Will Ferrell in “Old School,” Steve Carell in “Anchorman,” Jonah Hill in “Superbad” or Melissa McCarthy in “Bridesmaids.” This year, that performance was Tiffany Haddish in “Girls Trip.” The film itself is as strong and well-written a studio comedy as we’ve had of late, but its Haddish who lifts it into the sublime: her timing is so faultless that she can bring the house down purely by taking off her earrings, her energy one of unapologetic, unrestrained, curiously innocent id. She’s about to be a megastar, and it couldn’t be more deserved.
8. Cameron Britton as Edmund Kemper in “Mindhunter”
David Fincher‘s “Mindhunter” is a steel trap of meticulous, coolly understated performances, but even so Cameron Britton’s transcends it. In a performance that is uncannily redolent of the real, chatty, affable Ed Kemper, yet never descends into impersonation, Britton makes him fascinating because he is so intensely self-aware. He has essentially already profiled himself, observing his own fucked-up psychology as though it were an autonmous thing. At the same time, Britton is also very likeable, which makes that final dime-turn encounter the scariest moment of the season: Suddenly the guy we like and the necrophiliac murderer of 10 people aren’t two separate concepts anymore, but one and the same human being.
7. Willem Dafoe as Bobby in “The Florida Project”
There are no false performances in Sean Baker’s vibrant and devastating awards contender. But where most of the main cast are newcomers, the film’s highest-profile veteran also impresses for how atypical a role it is. The craggy, wolfish energy Dafoe has brought to numerous villains and antiheroes through the years is nowhere in Bobby, the kindhearted, exasperated motel manager who understands both the necessity and the limitations of the protection he can offer his marginalized tenants. To glimpse the breadth of Dafoe’s range, one need only contrast this Bobby with the other Bobby in his filmography: the murderous psycho in David Lynch‘s “Wild at Heart.”
6. Daniela Vega as Marina Vidal in “A Fantastic Woman”
Sebastian Lelio‘s Berlin hit is a fascinating hybrid that brings Hitchcockian overtones to a story about a trans woman coping with the death of her male lover and struggling with the attitudes of his estranged wife and family. And there is no doubt that Daniela Vega’s scintillating, wary, self-possessed performance here derives a great deal of its electricity from the fact that she herself is a trans woman. But in embodying the character’s steady, uncompromising refusal to be defined by the label Vega imperious and impervious turn acts almost like a mirror, reflecting whatever judgments we might make back unsparingly on the other characters, and on us.
5. Laurie Metcalf as Marion McPherson in “Lady Bird”
For all the greatness of its ensemble cast (Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet and Beanie Feldstein being just some of the standouts in the impeccable ensemble), “Lady Bird” is at its heart a duet between mother and daughter, and it’s finally given Laurie Metcalf the movie role she’s long deserved. The stage veteran, best known for “Roseanne,” recently reminded everyone how great she is thanks to her astonishing “Horace & Pete” monologue, but she’s even better here — unafraid to show the harder, brittler side of Lady Bird’s ma, but making her love for daughter, and the real wounds she suffers from her, shine through all the more for it.
4. Timothee Chalamet as Elio in “Call Me By Your Name”
It’s been gratifying to watch the lightning strike that happens to so few actors, happen to Timothee Chalamet, who has been hard at work for the best part of a decade. Impressing us, after a regular slot on “Homeland,” in the underseen “Miss Stevens,” this year also saw him crop up in “Lady Bird” and “Hostiles.” But it’s Luca Guadagnino‘s delirious first-love story that he absolutely owns (though support from Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg is impeccable), his riveting performance showing in how it’s likely the only film here for which everyone sat through the end credits, just to watch him cry and heal in front of that fire.
3. Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington in “Get Out”
The most subversive aspect of Jordan Peele‘s brilliant horror satire “Get Out” may also be its most basic: the first-person identification with a black character, and the “othering” of the white people. It works instantly, thanks to Kaluuya, who’s been impressing for a decade in the likes of”Skins,” “Black Mirror” and “Sicario,” bringing a watchful, slightly ironic, everyman energy. His Chris is a deeply sympathetic audience surrogate, whether taking yet another dose of white liberal racism on the chin, or trapped in The Sunken Place, his face an iconically frozen mask of terror. He’s yet another reason to be excited for “Black Panther.”
2. Robert Pattinson as Connie in “Good Time”
We can’t talk about Pattinson in 2017 without also mentioning his compelling and gentle supporting role in James Gray‘s grave and beautiful “The Lost City of Z.” But it’s his borderline unrecognizable turn in the Safdies’ “Good Time” that is the career-remaking revelation. Connie’s trippy, one-crazy-night, botched-heist shenanigans could merely be manic (and the film’s energy never flags), but Pattinson, beneath an astringently bottle-blonde mop of hair, (especially opposite an equally excellent Benny Safdie as his mentally challenged brother), brings the very thing his fame-making role as a vampire in the “Twilight” series definitely didn’t have: soul. R-Patz is dead; long live Robert Pattinson.
1. Sally Hawkins as Elisa Esposito in “The Shape Of Water”
Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” is a masterclass more or less from top to bottom, with the director surpassing himself at pretty much every level. But it’s entirely possible to believe that it simply wouldn’t have worked — hell, that it wouldn’t exist, given that Del Toro wrote the role for her — without Sally Hawkins. The British actress had a great year bookended by “Maudie” and “Paddington 2,” but this marks a career peak: the mute, lovelorn, outsider Elisa is a part that could have been desperately twee or cutesy in the wrong hands, but Hawkins’ light touch and sheer expressiveness makes her a complex and very grown-up human being amidst Del Toro’s gorgeous fairy tale.
Of course, even an expanded list of 40 wasn’t enough to hold all the performances we loved this year (we could have easily gone to 100), including likely Oscar nominees like Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour,” Richard Jenkins in “The Shape Of Water,” Hong Chau in “Downsizing,” Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg in “Call Me By Your Name,” Emma Stone in “Battle Of The Sexes,” James Franco in “The Disaster Artist,” Woody Harrelson in “Three Billboards,” and Allison Janney in “I Tonya” to name just a few
Other movie turns we loved in 2017 included Harry Dean Stanton’s lovely final performance in “Lucky,” Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis in “Colossal,” Elizabeth Marvel and Adam Sandler in “The Meyerowitz Stories,” Sylvia Hoeks and Carla Juri in “Blade Runner 2049,” James McAvoy in “Split,” Kirsten Dunst and Nicole Kidman in “The Beguiled,” Jake Johnson in “Win It All,” John C. Reilly in “Kong: Skull Island,” Kristen Stewart in “Personal Shopper,” Ellie Kendrick in “The Levelling,” Tracy Letts and Debra Winger in “The Lovers,” Teresa Palmer in “Berlin Syndrome,” Jamie Foxx in “Baby Driver,” Kumail Nanjiani and Ray Romano in “The Big Sick,” Jeremy Renner in “Wind River,” Daniel Craig in “Logan Lucky,” Grace Van Patten in “Tramps,” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Stronger,” Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn in “Una,” Rebecca Hall in “Professor Marston,” Nahuel Perez Biscayart in “BPM,” most of the cast of “Killing Of A Sacred Deer,” Tracy Letts in “Lady Bird,” Steve Carell in “Last Flag Flying” and Jessica Chastain in “Molly’s Game.”
And on the TV side, which we admittedly could have done a massive longer list with, we seriously considered the likes of Miguel Ferrer, Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachan and Michael Cera for “Twin Peaks: The Return,” Carrie Coon and Justin Theroux for “The Leftovers,” Rachel Brosnahan for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Carmen Ejogo for “The Girlfriend Experience,” Marque Richardson for “Dear White People,” Aubrey Plaza for “Legion,” Delroy Lindo for “The Good Fight,” Michael McKean for “Better Call Saul,” Ian McShane and Pablo Schreiber for “American Gods,” Kathryn Hahn for “I Love Dick,” Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters for “National Treasure,” Keri Russell for “The Americans,” Babou Ceesay for “Guerrilla,” Ted Danson for “The Good Place,” Betty Gilpin and Marc Maron for “GLOW,” Gwendoline Christie for “Top Of The Lake: China Girl,” Pamela Adlon for “Better Things,” Gaby Hoffman for “Transparent,” Jonathan Groff and Anna Torv for “Mindhunter,” Issa Rae for “Insecure,” Mackenzie Davis and Kerry Bishé for “Halt & Catch Fire,” and Griffin Newman for “The Tick.”
It was a difficult list to make and cutting dozens of names, but as is often the case with these lists, we just have to get the job done. Anything else we missed? Let us know in the comments.