Over the course of the past 26 years, movie acting has evolved in all sorts of interesting directions all over the world. For many reasons, performances on the big screen have distanced themselves more and more from the theatricality and elegant polish of the past. Non-verbal acting has become more powerfully subtle than ever before, and emotional realism and spontaneity have become all the more valuable. From this modern landscape of film acting have come several performances so riveting, so complex, and so unforgettable that they very much deserve to now be counted among the greatest in cinema’s history.
Whether it’s a performance that demonstrates the power of incredibly understated and low-key acting, like Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s jaw-dropping turn in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master; or a performance that shows there’s still plenty of room for over-the-top acting when the role demands it, like Heath Ledger‘s Oscar-winning work in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight, there are plenty of ways for an actor to cement a performance of theirs in modern film history. There have been six pieces of acting in particular since the arrival of the 2000s that will very likely be remembered among the greats a few decades from now.
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Mads Mikkelsen — ‘The Hunt’ (2012)
Image via Nordisk Film
While the vast majority of the most universally recognized masterful performances since 2000 have come from Hollywood, one of the wonderful things about the last 26 years has been that international cinema has become more widely accessible and closer to the mainstream than ever before. Thanks to that evolution, non-English-language powerhouse performances like that delivered by Mads Mikkelsen in Thomas Vinterberg‘s <em>The Hunt</em> have gained more international recognition than they would have a few decades prior. It may very well be the best movie performance not in English from the 21st century.
The Hunt as a whole is one of the best Scandinavian movies of all time, but it’s also inarguably the sort of movie that lives or dies by its lead performances. In anyone else’s hands, the role of Lucas, a divorced kindergarten teacher who becomes the target of a mass hysteria campaign after a student lies about him having sexually assaulted her, might have devolved into cartoonish territory. Instead, Mikkelsen develops the character with a level of patience that’s a hell of a sight to behold. It’s not until the film’s momentous third act that Mikkelsen finally allows Lucas to explode, and that perfectly calculated subtlety is what lends The Hunt most of its emotional power.
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Philip Seymour Hoffman — ‘The Master’ (2012)
Image via The Weinstein Company
Paul Thomas Anderson is far and away one of the most talented filmmakers currently working, an auteur who has been behind several of the greatest motion pictures since the late ’90s—and certainly since 2000. One such masterpiece is The Master, one of the best character studies of the 21st century. Alongside Joaquin Phoenix, who also delivers a performance that deserves to be counted among the greatest in modern film history, Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as the charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd.
Despite his direct similarities to Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard, Hoffman steers clear from making Dodd a simplistic caricature. Rather, he perfectly embodies and elevates the themes that Anderson explores in The Master: post-war trauma, the complex psychology of all cults (rather than just a specific one), and the visceral human instincts of submission and domination. Hoffman commands the screen with absolute mastery (pun not intended) every single time he’s on it, without ever making Dodd feel cartoonish or one-dimensional. Charming, warm, and psychologically complex, his performance here was perhaps the best he ever delivered in a motion picture.
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Mo’Nique — ‘Precious’ (2009)
Based on the novelPush bySapphire,Lee Daniels‘Precious is an undeniable masterpiece, but it’s alsothe sort of film so painfully gut-wrenching that you watch it once and then never want to watch again. A lot of that comes from the heartbreaking character of Mary Lee Johnson, the unemployed and abusive mother that makes Precious’ life a living hell. The twist? In the role of Mary, Daniels cast not a seasoned dramatic titan butMo’Nique, an over-the-top stand-up comedian playingverymuch against type. The result is one of the best Oscar-winning performances of all time.
But while Mo’Nique could have fully embraced the subversion of her casting and gone for a purely provocative performance relying solely on shock value, she instead takes Mary and turns her into one of the most memorable drama movie characters from any movie from the 2000s. She plays this role with such twisty charisma, such gravitas, and such a complete lack of vanity that this allows her to find humanity in her character with just as much ease as she finds rage and vitriol.
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