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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.