The last 12 months have provided many good films, if few truly great ones. It’s an entirely different story, however, when it comes to epic, all-consuming, truly unbelievable performances—staggeringly impressive, soul-stirring turns which take up every corner of the screen with their heart and humanity (or lack thereof), and are impossible to forget, even if the projects they appear in don’t rise to the occasion in quite the same way.
As awards season kicks off, these are the seven actors who most deserve your attention, not to mention a sackful of golden statuettes.
The embodiment: Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown
Playing a globally-recognized musical superstar is often a fast-track to winning an Oscar—just think of Renée Zellweger in Judy, Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody, Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, Jamie Foxx in Ray—but what is remarkable about the newly mustachioed heartthrob’s somber, subtle, wonderfully contained portrayal of a young Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s freewheeling drama is that it is intentionally unshowy: mumbly, awkward, uncertain, deliberately obtuse, and actively shrinking from the spotlight. It’s almost beside the point that he also sings in the Nobel Prize winner’s distinctive drawl, speaks in his gruff voice, adopts his mannerisms, and holds himself with the same hunched, anxious reticence—without ever getting bogged down in that minutiae, Chalamet simply captures Dylan’s essence and seems to slip into his skin. Hollywood’s endless appetite for biopics is frequently exhausting, but if more of them contained performances as intricate and masterful as this one, you’ll hear no complaints from me.
