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I saw many dazzling performances this year, across film, television, and theater—too many to name on one list. So, I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty of people here. I’ve also chosen to omit others, because either I’m writing about them soon (hello, boys of Heated Rivalry!) or have written excessively about them in the past (Rose Byrne, you’re good). But this is hopefully a thorough-enough survey of the work I loved watching in 2025.  

Naomi Ackie, Sorry, Baby

While Eva Victor’s lovely chamber piece is mostly focused on Victor’s character, Ackie provides crucial context and ballast as a best friend who has drifted off into her own productive life but occasionally returns to her pal, who is so terribly caught in shell-shocked stasis. Ackie’s life-giving warmth deepens Victor’s picture of chilly desolation, perfectly calibrating her character’s mix of concern, care, and frustration. It’s a transcendent reinterpretation of the best friend role, giving full body and meaning to a person we don’t, on the page, know all that much about. 

Mariam Afshari, It Was Just an Accident

Afshari has the difficult task of playing a determined pragmatism furiously working to keep at bay howling anger and grief. In Jafar Panahi’s solemn but also lively film, Afshari plays a formerly imprisoned and tortured woman who is trying to move on with her life as a modern-day Tehranian. And yet she cannot escape the past, or the past cannot escape her, a fact she must gradually come to terms with as Panahi’s gripping film unfolds. Afshari plays that dawning realization, or acceptance, in measured increments, never losing her character’s hard-won mettle entirely, but eventually letting it give way to a primal surge of vengeance. Afshari maintains astonishing control throughout.

Everett Blunck, Griffin in Summer and The Plague 

For a kid to deliver two of the most striking performances of the year is a feat unto itself. But for said kid to do so in a bittersweet comedy and a chilling social thriller is remarkable. Blunck winsomely captures the alternately endearing and annoying theater-kid energy of Griffin in Summer’s title character, precocious to a fault but at root a decent young person just eager and excited to find his place (and his person) in the world. It’s impossible not to wish him all the luck. And it’s impossible to not pity Blunck’s timid, awkward character in The Plague, a somber drama about bullying at an all-boys water polo camp. Blunck bracingly reminded me of myself at that age, a fey boy trying and failing to keep his head above roiling, shark-infested social waters. Astute and detailed, Blunck’s performance (and that of his co-star, Kayo Martin) makes the movie. 

Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later

Amazing that a documentary crew was able to find the reclusive Fiennes at his home, where he has built a glorious temple out of the bones of the dead. At least it kinda feels that way, given how naturally Fiennes blends into the world of Danny Boyle’s oddball continuation of his zombie saga. Fiennes is a surprising source of comfort, cutting through the film’s heavy atmosphere of dread and despair. Maybe he’s righteous or maybe he’s insane—which might be the only a rational response to the horror of the world, his or our own. 

Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about Hawke’s swishy, loquacious performance in my best movies of the year list, but I wanted to give him one more shoutout before the year ends, because I’m a little worried that next year his name won’t be said often enough. Will the Oscars recognize a huge performance in a tiny movie? The odds are looking better and better (the Golden Globe nomination helps!), but with Timmy and Leo sucking up so much of the best actor oxygen, it’s all too likely that Hawke’s gregarious, wonderful chatter will be drowned out.

Archie Madekwe and Théodore Pellerin, Lurker

Alex Russell’s film might have been a lot less believable if the actors playing the two lead characters—one a haughty, needy rising pop idol; the other a squirrely and cunning hanger-on—didn’t bring specific, well-observed detail to the picture. But Pellerin and Madekwe do just that, adding notes of yearning, menace, and arousal to Russell’s picture of young people clambering up the ladder of fame. Madekwe locates a narcissist's wounded humanity while convincingly performing songs that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio today. Pellerin shrewdly balances his character’s frightening qualities with his sympathetic ones. It’s vivid, nuanced work from two actors who seem destined for their own healthier version of stardom. 

Tânia Maria, The Secret Agent

As Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sprawling period drama cryptically begins, one fears that it’s going to be aloof and withholding for its entire run. But then Maria’s Dona Sebastiana shows up, filling her scenes with open compassion and peppery humor. Maria gamely plays an unlikely member of the underground resistance to a corrupt government, who natters about in her homey, sassy-grandma way while also doing the miracle work of ferrying those targeted by the regime to safety. She is a kindred spirit of Benicio del Toro’s character in One Battle After Another; thank god people like their characters exist in real life, and that they were honored so beautifully—with such pep and vitality—in the movies this year. 

Dylan O’Brien, Twinless

Two characters for the price of one actor whose heyday is long overdue, who unfortunately broke out in a show (Teen Wolf) that was never going to earn him much respect. But O’Brien has plugged away for over a decade now, and has finally been rewarded with a part—two parts—worthy of his talent. He’s a lovable dope in most of James Sweeney’s finely articulated dramedy. But then the story shifts; we travel back in time; and suddenly O’Brien is a strutting, prowling gay guy on the make. It’s a startling transformation, done without any of the, “Hey look at me, I’m being brave” smugness that can still—still!—animate so many gay performances by straight actors. O’Brien helps evolve that often meddlesome trope, showing a way forward marked by both respect and irreverence. 

Josh O’Connor, The History of Sound

I’ve already written a little about Wake Up Dead Man, so I wanted to focus here on O’Connor’s other great performance of 2025. I don’t love the entirety of Oliver Hermanus’s muffled, overly studied romantic drama, but O’Connor is a marvel in it. He achingly plays the haunted scion of a fading legacy, lost to his own entropy. The character is jilted by war, yes, but in O’Connor’s rendering, he was perhaps always doomed to streak across the sky and burn out quickly, no matter what external disaster befell him. He is, in some senses, playing an idea of youth itself, its possibility and its fleetingness, the sadness of something ending just as it seems to have really begun. It’s a ghostly performance in the most palpable of ways, further proof that O’Connor is among the most resourceful, thoughtful actors of his age. 

Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee

While Ann Lee has largely flown under the awards radar (it missed the Oscar shortlist for original song??), Seyfried scored a Golden Globe nomination after being blanked by critics groups all month. (Well, most of them; good work, Las Vegas!) I hope at the very least that that recognition encourages people to seek out Seyfried in Mona Fastvold’s strange, compelling, sometimes alienating musical epic. The film is full of gorgeous photography and lovely songs. But the main draw is Seyfried’s appropriately feverish, ecstatic-in-the-old-sense performance as the traumatized messiah of a religious sect. It’s actorly commitment of the sort that sometimes gets mocked. But if you allow yourself to give into the swirl and strain of the work, Seyfried will make you a believer in going big. x

Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Taylor’s job in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is tricky: she has a short time to make an impression that has to last for the entirety of the movie. And, well, she manages it with ease, magnetically embodying a fiery but conflicted revolutionary who leaves decades’ worth of lingering scars in her wake. Her ferocious energy kicks the film off with the bang it needs in order to keep hurtling along for another two-plus hours. Without her, the movie undeniably suffers.

Babou Ceesay, Alien: Earth

There are plenty of mesmerizing performances on Noah Hawley’s icky, eerily good horror series. But I was most captivated by Ceesay’s dogged cyborg, Morrow, a villain richly textured with complex personal motivations. Ceesay brings a classical rumble to these futuristic proceedings; with a few tweaks, the character (or, at least, the performance) could be plopped right down into the ancient tragedies of Thebes or Shakespeare’s Italy. There is a mystery, and a pain, behind his eyes that burns through the screen. Speaking of eyes, I would also like to commend the delightful comic performance of Ceesay’s costar, the Eyeball Monster, who brought some much needed levity to this gruesome exercise. I’d happily watch their buddy spinoff. 

Alex Guarnaschelli, Alex vs. America

If you’re going to wade into the tightly interconnected world of Food Network celebrity programming, this one is a good entry point. In addition to being a highly capable competition chef who can successfully work in a staggering array of cuisines and disciplines (though, not all!), Guarnaschelli knows how to give good TV. As she’s challenged by a relentless barrage of competitors, week after week (now in her fifth season), Guarnaschelli is tart and salty and just the right amount of melodramatic. She knows that the very fact that she has her own show at all means she’s won the long game, so she’s willing to take a few dings or narrowly escape a tight spot if it makes for compelling viewing. Guarnaschelli has amiable arrogance and graciousness in defeat down to an artful, foolproof recipe. 

Savannah Louie, Survivor 

Is being on Survivor a performance? By some measures, absolutely. Look at Louie, a former TV news anchor who had to downplay the composure and telegenicism necessary to her career to keep herself from being bounced out of Survivor 49 near immediately. (RIP Jon Lovett.) Which isn’t to say she wasn’t a target: she was forced to dodge bullet after bullet all season long, whether by winning immunity challenges or plucking the strings of her alliance just enough to change the vibrations at camp. I know some other contestants thought she was a mean girl, and she did badly bungle one telling response during the Final Tribal question session. But otherwise it was a total pleasure to watch Louie deftly maneuver the minefield laid out before her and put the Survivor nerds—who populate way too much of the cast these days—in their place. 

Onya Nurve, RuPaul’s Drag Race

Louie may not have arrived as an underdog, but Onya Nurve certainly was just that at the start of Drag Race season 17. She entered the workroom completely unknown to the other contestants—she wasn’t club- or Instagram-famous, she didn’t have house connections or sisters in arms from back home to keep her company. She was, then, initially dismissed as throwaway filler. But then near immediately Nurve began showing her castmates, and the audience, what she could do. She nailed challenges left and right, was at the center of some fun and ultimately harmless workroom drama, and knew exactly how to volley back and forth with Ru on the runway. She was a dream contestant for latter day Drag Race, when so much has grown tired: a true original, and a true surprise. 

Genevieve O’Reilly, Andor

I could gush about the whole of Andor season two for pages and pages—its entire cast, all of its writing and direction, all of its design—because to my mind it is a perfect run of television episodes. But O’Reilly was perhaps first among equals this season, mightily rendering Mon Mothma’s growing horror at revolution’s cost and maybe, just maybe, giving real-world senators the inspiration to actually risk something in the fight against authoritarianism. Oh, who am I kidding, that’s not going to happen. And really, why bother trying to further justify O’Reilly’s place on this list beyond simply saying: the dance! The dance, the dance, the dance.

Ashley Padilla, “Haircut,” Saturday Night Live

Padilla has been the breakout star of SNL’s 51st season, a necessary ray of hope during what has otherwise felt like a shaky rebuilding year following significant cast exits this summer. (And, now, winter. Bye, Bowen!) Padilla’s potential was perhaps never better glimpsed than at the very beginning of this sketch, adapted from one she’d performed at the Groundlings, in which her character bravely, tragically steels herself to debut her terrible new haircut to her friends. It’s a really sharp bit of acting, as funny as it is banally tragic. One hopes that the show will prudently seize on Padilla’s momentum and let her gently hone her voice rather than amping her up to full blast right away, like they recently did with another cast member (sorry, Domingo). 

Jenny Slate, Dying for Sex

Slate’s co-star Michelle Williams had the showier role on FX’s bleary comedy-drama. She’s the one who got to do all the dying and the sexing. But as Williams’s steadfast, perhaps recklessly devoted best friend, Slate gradually became the heart of the series, poignantly capturing the wild yaws between happy camaraderie and bone-deep sorrow that accompany an end-of-life journey like this one. Slate tremendously fills the final frame of Dying for Sex, flashing the camera a smile that is at once hopeful and devastated. A subtle knockout. 

Joseph Tudisco, The Chair Company

I have no idea how Chair Company co-creators Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin found some of their actors for this grim and gonzo series, and in many ways I don’t want to know. I’d rather imagine that Tudisco—who plays a bizarre and sinister but also kind of sweet security guard (of sorts) who becomes Robinson’s Sancho Panza in the unraveling of a conspiracy—was just stumbled upon during filming. He’s breathtakingly natural in a role full of twists and contradictions, a scumbag with a heart of gold who might also be evil. It’s glorious work, and here stands as a representative for the entirety of this transfixing show’s sterling, eclectic ensemble. 

Agatha Wiggs, The Beast in Me

I don’t mean Claire Danes’s performance as Agatha Wiggs, which is another solid bit of Danesian grit and mania. I mean the name itself, a creation so absurd it’s been making me laugh for months. Why is she named Agatha Wiggs, when this fictional character could have literally any other name? But Agatha Wiggs it is—sometimes Aggie, though I prefer Agatha. The character is a famous writer, so the name is said a lot on the show. Like a lot, a lot. I think I at the very least chuckled every time. Agatha Wiggs! You can’t beat it. May she reign forever.

Lesley Manville, Oedipus 

After winning an Olivier in London, Manville came to Broadway to reprise her role as the wife-mother of a rising politician in Robert Icke’s sharp, entertaining reimagining of the Sophocles tragedy. I’m so glad she made the trip. At first, I watched Manville work the stage with prim efficiency and thought, sure she’s good, but this is kind of just a less interesting variation on her character in Phantom Thread. But then about two thirds of the way through this trim, relatively economical play, Manville’s Jocasta starts telling a story and doesn’t stop for what feels like an hour. Manville holds the audience’s attention so thoroughly, with such delicate intensity, that it felt like even the merest of shifting in my seat would shatter the finely wrought tension of the moment. It’s an astounding piece of stage acting, comfortably existing in some beguiling middle-place between realism and high drama. 

Cynthia Nixon, Marjorie Prime

This remounting of Jordan Harrison’s wispy speculation about mortality and A.I., its first time on Broadway, has its other modest merits. But Nixon, who plays the daughter of a senile woman trying to grasp what any life in the world actually amounts to, briefly elevates the production toward greatness. In her climactic scene, Nixon—looking lovely in a long wig and upscale bohemian ensemble—conjures up the persistent, sometimes unbearable doubt that lies at the center of being, the hopeless idea that none of what we do on earth really means anything if it’s all going to end and be forgotten anyway. It’s a shattering moment, and a reminder of why Nixon is regarded as one of the best stage actors in town—one who just happens to have been on a massive hit TV show and once ran for governor. 

Andrew Scott, Vanya

I’ll admit that I rolled my eyes when I heard that Andrew Scott, a fine actor who can nonetheless over-egg things with all his cerebral interiority, was doing a one-man Uncle Vanya off-Broadway. These solo re-workings of classic texts can be really hokey, as evidenced by The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway last season. But then I actually saw Scott do the thing (in the words of Ariana DeBose) and felt bad about the eye rolling. As Scott gracefully toggled between a host of characters using the tiniest shifts in bearing and tone of voice, he made a well-worn classic feel wholly new again. It made me rethink a play I thought I knew forward and back (and which was recently staged quite flatly on Broadway), and it gave me a deeper appreciation for Scott’s singular ability to contain all of human experience in a single facial expression. He is, I must now finally admit, the real deal. 

The Hydraulic Lift, Ragtime

Lear deBessonet’s gorgeous revival of this cherished musical—at once corny and deeply moving—is full of highlights. I wept at the reprise of “Wheels of a Dream,” I swelled with melancholy wonder at “Journey On.” But it’s that busy and crescendoing opening number that still, all these years later, packs one of the biggest wallops in musical theater. DeBessonet has the good sense to have her massive cast rise up through the floor of Lincoln Center’s Beaumont stage, singing the show’s signature establishing melody as if they are evanescing from the graveyard of America. It’s heartstopping, and augurs all the good that’s to come in this sterling, alert revival. 

Okay, now tell me about your favorite performances of the year! I’d love to check out things I missed, or be reminded of things I grievously forgot. Email me!