11 Best Performances of 2025

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This year had some amazing performances! Compared to previous years it wasn't just the depth of some people's performances, but how many new names we were shouting from the rooftops. Though, no surprise, usual offenders like Emma Stone and Timothee Chalamet put in great work this year. The twelve performances below represent not only some of the best of the year, but the ones that just stopped us in our tracks. These are the actors who made us say, "Damn" and watch their exploits with bated breath.

Be sure to champion your best performances in the comments below. We could have easily included another twelve if we had the time.

Tessa Thompson (Hedda)

I've seen Hedda at least three times now and every time I notice something new about Tessa Thompson's languorously wicked performance. As I said in my initial review of the movie: Tessa Thompson is astounding as a character who is manipulating at every turn. Like the best narcissists, Thompson plays Hedda as a woman trying to feign human emotions yet always looking out for herself. Her comments, even if they sound complimentary in the moment, turn out to be cold insults after the moment has passed. Every line Thompson speaks is dripping with poison and disdain and yet you understand why a highly intelligent person like Eileen is drawn to her, or why Eileen's lover Thea (Imogen Poots) is terrified of her. There's a silky, cat-like mien to her performance. -Kristen Lopez

Jack O’Connell (Sinners)

Sinners is packed to the brim with memorable characters. Michael B. Jordan’s Smokestack Twins, Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, Miles Catton’s Sammie “Preacherboy” Moore, and Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie all feel rich with detail and incredibly portrayed. Even among that wealth of talent, Jack O’Connell’s incredible turn as the Irish vampire Remmick stands out. Remmick’s powerful and dangerous, building an entire hive of predatory vampires in a small amount of time. He’s also dangerously charming, capable of convincing people to willingly join his joyful, egalitarian vampire hive. It’s clear O’Connell’s having a blast and it all makes for one of the year’s best and most interesting villains. -Jeff Ewing

Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)

Leonardo DiCaprio has given us consistently brilliant performances for going on twenty years, at least. But there's something different in his performance as Bob Ferguson in One Battle, one that goes beyond comparisons to his past comedic characters like Jordan Belfort and Rick Dalton. In a recent rewatch of the movie, his bumbling, Dude-like persona is on full display, but the depth of emotion and love he conveys for daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Even in his comedic moments, where he's sobbing over his inability to figure out the password, it's from the sheer fear and frustration of knowing he can't save his child. It's a pitch-perfect performance. -KL

Michael B Jordan (Sinners)

Michael B. Jordan gives an incredible performance as the set of twins whose juke joint dreams were made possible thanks to a teeeeensy mob theft. Both brothers look and feel completely distinct, a stellar feat from the talented Jordan. When the charming Stack gets turned into a vampire he feels even more different: still charismatic, but now predatory and deceptive. Thanks to Jordan’s talents and Ryan Coogler’s stellar direction, these 2.5 characters each feel like spectacular, fleshed out people with whole lives behind them, and any one of them could hold a film alone. It’s an incredible effort, for one-to-three of the best performances of the year. -JE

Tonatiuh (Kiss of the Spider Woman) - KL

It's a shame that Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Tonatiuh's fantastic performance as Molina, have petered out since the movie debuted a few months back. As I said in my original review: "Tonatiuh is a revelation. Not only does he have a lovely voice, shown off in songs like 'She's a Woman' and 'Only in the Movies,' but warmth radiates off him. He makes Molina a highly compassionate man just seeking love. As much as Valentin pushes him aside, Molina comes back stronger, just not to be released from prison but to find someone who understands who he is (outside of his mother)."

It's such a fragile, delicate performance and maybe that's why it didn't get as far as it should. This year has been about A-list actors doing Big Performances. At least we have this!

Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another boasts one of the year’s finest ensembles, but you could make a strong argument that Benicio del Toro’s Sergio St. Carlos stands out the most. The movie’s essentially about the efforts of ex-French 75 member Pat Calhoun trying to keep his daughter Willa safe, but del Toro’s Sergio (Willa’s sensei and Pat’s mentor) feels so fleshed out and complete that you can imagine his rich backstory. I’d watch an entirely different film centered on his work with a group advocating the region’s undocumented community, and celebrate it over “a few small beers.” Easily among the year’s finest. -JE

Oscar Isaac (Frankenstein) -KL

Though Elordi is who many are shouting out for Frankenstein (and I understand why), it was so wonderful seeing Oscar Isaac go for broke as Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Isaac takes a character played so iconically by Colin Clive, in the 1933 feature, and imbuing his take on the character with a similar hamminess. Isaac's Frankenstein is crass, cruel, yet also just incredibly socially awkward. But once Elordi's monster shows up on the scene, Isaac tweaks that ever so slightly to illustrate a father who is so disappointed with what he's crafted. It's a peacock-ing role and I loved every second of it. -KL

Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)

It’s a difficult task to embody a monster in a believable way, to convincingly embody a being who, by definition, lies outside our lived experience. One that doesn’t necessarily think, feel, or experience things the same as us. Jacob Elordi has long proven himself as a solid performer, giving great performances in Euphoria and Saltburn, but he put in his best work yet as the Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s masterful Frankenstein. At times menacing and raging, yet pained, intelligent, and delicate at others, it’s an incredible showcase of Elordi’s performative prowess. His Creature is a lonely, abused violation of nature hiding a complex man inside, and Elordi translates that incredibly. -JE

Josh O’Connor (Rebuilding)

O'Connor did some masterful work in 2025, any one of which could have probably gone here (the neck tat in Wake Up Dead Man got me just as spun as everyone else). But I kept going back to his role in the unsung gem Rebuilding time and again. It's such a quiet performance that shows the power O'Connor conveys by simple standing in a room. Solemn and tender, he crafts not only a portrait of a father lost to responsibility, but a man trying to find his own identity outside of being a parent. It's a meditative treatise on adulthood I couldn't get out of my mind. -KL

Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)

Be right back, trying to write through tears after Jessie Buckley’s powerful performance in Hamnet. As Agnes Shakespeare, the long-suffering wife of The Bard himself (Paul Mescal), Buckley creates a character who feels genuinely magical. When isolation and tragedy hit their family, Buckley is raw, running through the entirety of grief’s stages with a furor. As monumental as her palpable sadness gets, her wave of evolving emotions in the finale is as unforgettable. Buckley adeptly embodies the ever-fluctuating nature of grief in all its dullness, rage, and complexity, a monumental achievement that turns Hamnet into a heart-obliterating mess with a beautiful end. -JE

Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You)

There were quite a few emotionally tortured/conflicted mom roles this year, but my favorite of them all remains Rose Byrne in Mary Bronstein's fabulous If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You. As Bronstein and I discussed last year, the movie tries hard to upend a lot of stereotypes about caregivers to those with disabilities and chronic ailments, and Byrne does a lot to shape that. Her performance is one where, even when she's doing something bizarre, there's a kernel of relatability to it thanks to Byrne's easy-going smile or deadpan humor. She's a woman trying hard to keep all the eggs in one basket as the basket is breaking, internally. It's a performance that's fierce and ferocious, but also traumatized and broken. -KL