As awards season ramps up, some of the year’s most acclaimed actors will vie for one trophy after another. However, 2025 was a treasure trove of great performances across the board, from pivotal supporting parts that guide the story to the quiet secret ingredients that add dramatic flair. These six performances might have flown under the radar, but they stand shoulder to shoulder with the names being considered for statuettes.
Ryan Bader
“The Smashing Machine”
It’s easy to be overshadowed by a performance touted as “transformative,” and star Dwayne Johnson certainly deserves the praise. But as the close confidant to Johnson’s MMA brawler Mark Kerr, real-life cage fighter Bader delivers a sensitive debut performance as Kerr’s competitor–turned–best friend Mark Coleman, the film’s ostensible conscience. Caught between the troubled protagonist and his possessive partner, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), Coleman is tasked with being Kerr’s cautious support system, a role he embodies by quietly observing the couple’s dynamic and calculating opportune moments to interject. “Acting is reacting” is said to be Stella Adler’s greatest truism, and if it’s to be believed, then this novice surrounded by seasoned professionals is the film’s dramatic key.
Courtesy A24
Grace Edwards
“Jay Kelly”
In Noah Baumbach’s examination of Hollywood stardom, relative newcomer Edwards finds herself opposite George Clooney’s title character—one of the world’s biggest stars playing one of the world’s biggest stars—as Daisy, Jay’s free-spirited teenage daughter. Daisy more than holds her own against her father’s attempts to finally connect, self-important advances toward which she maintains caution. With Edwards’ charm and acting prowess matching that of her more famous colleagues (note how subtly the actor harbors the pain of abandonment), she marks her arrival in dazzling fashion, through a deceptively difficult role that requires her to stay centered.
Credit: Peter Mountain/Netflix
Aminah Nieves
“A House of Dynamite”
Nieves—who broke out on Taylor Sheridan’s Western drama “1923”—makes only a minor appearance amid the sprawling ensemble of Kathryn Bigelow’s thrilling nuclear triptych for Netflix. But she’s secretly its emotional linchpin. Sergeant Mary Nolan, a subordinate officer at a remote military outpost, is swept up in the action when her unit is tasked with launching an interceptor missile at a rogue warhead bound for the United States. With countless lives hanging in the balance, Nieves’ intensely troubled expression opposite a computer monitor demonstrates the vital importance of reaction shots in action cinema. Practically single-handedly, she sells the monumental stakes of the situation, and the mounting despair as it unfolds.
Courtesy Netflix
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James Raterman
“One Battle After Another”
For all its Pynchon-esque exaggerations, Paul Thomas Anderson’s winding stoner thriller defaults to naturalism in one key regard: the minor role of military interrogator Colonel Danvers. Played by former Homeland Security Investigations and Secret Service special agent Raterman, Danvers is the chilling centerpiece of three cross-examinations in which the first-time film actor effortlessly holds all power and advantage over his costars (including the great Regina Hall). No-nonsense and to the point, Raterman displays an icy demeanor that imbues affable words and gestures with scary intent, ensuring that even the film’s most caricatured moments remain tethered to a recognizable political reality.
Courtesy Warner Bros.
Zoë Winters
“Materialists”
Shouldered with one of the year’s most daring tonal shifts, Winters (of HBO’s “Succession”) plays Sophie, a key element in Celine Song’s deconstructive rom-com. A single New Yorker touching 40 and giving off a cloying desperation, Sophie hires matchmaker protagonist Lucy (Dakota Johnson). As with Johnson’s icy main character, the audience is nudged toward reductive preconceptions about Sophie, which Winters emphasizes through the character’s caricatured neediness, before shattering these expectations when her subplot takes a bleak and violent turn. Winters does remarkable work as a woman who feels trapped and betrayed, in a role without which the movie simply wouldn’t work.
Courtesy Netflix
Leo Woodall
“Nuremberg”
In James Vanderbilt’s post–World War II drama, Woodall (“The White Lotus,” “One Day”) portrays German-language interpreter Sergeant Howie Triest, a background character who selflessly cedes space to the central cast—before the actor brilliantly snatches it back. He paints Triest, a real-life figure, with the broad strokes of “rah-rah” U.S. patriotism, before revealing complex motives and layers, which retroactively make uncanny aspects of his performance snap into place. What he initially hides through subtle gestures and gazes eventually builds to a rousing tale of survival through assimilation, and the challenge of finding justice in the face of evil. The film may be about inhumane Nazi leadership, but Woodall is its human face.
Credit: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics