We often wax effusive about movies, their meaning, their craft, their intention, how they are sculpted and shaped, but sometimes we forget about the director’s mantra: that casting is everything and we arguably sometimes take for granted how some movies that seem so perfect, may not work at all without the actors and performers at their center.
READ MORE: The 21 Best Films Of 2023
2023 was a great year for movies, see our Best Films Of 2023 list, but let’s be real, so many of these movies were make or break based on their performances. Also, not every movie might make a Best Films Of The Year list, but some performances are just too good to ignore. So, as we have all of this December and parts of November, our Best of 2023 coverage continues.
READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2024
Today, we’re looking at the Best Performances of the year and since there were so many crucial ones in television, we’re combining some of those picks with out favorite performances in film as well. What acting turns dazzled us this year? Well, so goddamn, many, really. And yes, there is overlap with our Best Films Of 2023 feature and our Best TV Shows & Mini-Series feature, but that’s the very foundation of our argument. Movies and TV are nothing without the central, critical casting at is center. And sometimes, these performances are so damn good, they make the whole endeavor seem effortless and natural, almost to the point of forgetting how good like Cillian Murphy might be in “Oppenheimer,” a performance that is neither big, showy or effusive, but so instrumental in expressing all that Nolan’s film has to convey about arrogance, brilliance, regret, remorse, guilt and more. Roger Ebert famously said, “Movies are like a machine that generates empathy,” and the crucial instrument of that machine is the actors, actresses and performances that make that engine run, purr and roar. Here’s our list of the Best Performances of 2023.
Follow along with all our Best Of 2023 coverage here.
Cailee Spaeny, “Priscilla” Some of the parts were small, but if you saw her in “Pacific Rim Uprising,” “Bad Times at the El Royale,” and perhaps more crucially, her key roles in “Devs” (2020) and “Mare of Easttown” (2021), you knew Cailee Spaeny was special and destined for greater things. So it came as little surprise when someone like Sofia Coppola plucked her out of near obscurity and handed her the lead performance in the Elvis and Priscilla Presley drama, “Priscilla.” Like Kirsten Dunst before her, Spaeny perfectly embodies the innocent, soft, beautiful Coppola ingenue, full of internal doubt, angst, notions of loneliness, and vulnerability. The genius of “Priscilla,” as expressed by the wonderful Spaeny, is really isolation. Priscilla has everything she could possibly want in the world: fame, a global rock-star husband, great wealth, affluence, a coterie of surrounding people hanging on her every need, seemingly no care in the world. But the truth is, despite it all, Priscilla has nothing of meaning and lives in a delicate glass prison. Her Graceland is a world of pain and loneliness, and Spaeny quietly expresses all of that, including the desperate, self-aware need to break free. – Rodrigo Perez
Kieran Culkin, “Succession” There’s a reason “Succession” won so many damn Emmys in its four years (48 Emmy nominations and counting, with more sure to come for the final season). Its cast was stacked with amazing players. And while the tantrums of “I’m the eldest boy!” Jeremy Strong was fantastic; it’s Roman, Kieran Culkin’s character, who was perhaps the richest and most complex, that was paradoxically the funniest and yet most heartbreaking. All the kids yearned to be loved and seek the approval of the ruthlessly unpredictable and emotionally withholding Logan Roy (Brian Cox), but Culkin’s Roman was a masterclass in dysfunctional broken identity, a haughty arrogant little fuck masking his tiny little ego with viciously sardonic barbs, a selfish, carefree recklessness and a snake-like malevolence and bitterness simmering underneath, always ready to strike. Culkin navigated the contradictory multitudes of Roman like it was all second nature to him, pivoting on a dime from hissing venom to cowardly sad simp. Roman Roy was dirty, perverse, weird, thriving on the debasement and humiliation of others, perhaps even himself, and yes, Culkin did all that in a way that made you despise him, adore him, and empathize so deeply with the kid that just so desperately wanted his father’s approval. – RP
Sandra Hüller,  “Anatomy Of A Fall” and “The Zone Of Interest”It’s been quite the year for Sandra Hüller and it all started at Cannes. Not only was she the lead in Justine Triet‘s Palme d’Or winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” but she was also a central character in Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” which came in second. She’s already won numerous critics’ prizes, including the European Film Awards’ European Actress honor for “Anatomy” where she plays a mother accused of killing her husband in their secluded Grenoble home (Did she? Didn’t she? That’s for the viewer to judge ultimately). In ‘Zone,’ she portrays Hedwig Höss, the wife of Rudolf Höss, the notorious Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz prison camp. As a horrific genocide occurs on the other side of their garden wall, Hedwig is ambivalent to the sounds of a crematorium running all day and all night long. She has jewels and clothing stolen from the Jewish prisoners to go through. Two very different characters that Hüller makes unforgettable in their own unique way. – Gregory Ellwood
Anne Hathaway, “Eileen”Almost from the moment she appears on screen in William Oldroyd‘s pulpy thriller you can tell that Anne Hathaway is having a blast. Inspired by legendary Italian actress Monica Vitti, Hathaway portrays Rebecca, the new counselor at a New England prison in the early 1960s. Except, the viewer’s perspective of Rebecca is from the title character (Tomasin McKenzie), who, as Hathaway continually reminded us in a recent  interview, is an “unreliable narrator.” Hathaway runs with that perspective making Rebecca seemingly a sly, seductive, and strong-willed character who holds a cigarette like a Hollywood starlet and would never let her dark roots show in her perfectly coiffed dyed blonde hair. It’s as though Hathaway took the baton from Cate Blanchett’s “Carol” and sprinted across the finish line. She’s so captivating you wish the 98-minute flick were actually longer. – GE