This awards season saw a bevy of great performances, but some actors delivered more than others. Here are six actors who didn’t seem to stop in 2016!
Rachel Weisz
We’ve always known Weisz was one hell of an actor—she has an Oscar, after all!—but this year we were particularly spoiled with a handful of award-worthy performances from the British talent. After slowing her output between 2012–2015, we didn’t quite know how much we missed Weisz until last year’s “Youth”; the months since have seen “The Lobster,” “Complete Unknown,” “Denial,” and “The Light Between Oceans.” It’s particularly in that final supporting turn alongside contemporary greats Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender that she’s truly astounding as Hannah, whose husband and infant daughter were lost at sea. Her precise emotional navigation as first a woman mourning, then a mother set on bringing her daughter home, ranks among the most riveting acts this year. —Benjamin Lindsay
Felicity Jones
Jones took her Oscar nomination for “The Theory of Everything” and began booking much-deserved work in a variety of projects on the big screen. Slowly but surely she’s proving herself a master of genre versatility, whether it’s bold and gritty space-opera franchises (Jones takes the lead in the upcoming “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) or touching fantasy-dramas (her performance as a dying mother in “A Monster Calls” will do a number on your heartstrings). Throw in her work in two thrillers—“Collide,” with Nicholas Hoult, and “Inferno” opposite Tom Hanks—and you’ve got yourself a contender for performer of the year. —Jack Smart
Mahershala Ali
With Alex Hibbert in "Moonlight"
As his Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes would say in Netflix’s “Luke Cage,” “Everybody wants to be the king.” After Ali’s incredible year, we’re convinced he owns the throne. You can’t help but sit a little straighter when Ali’s onscreen in his Emmy-nominated “House of Cards” role or features like “Free State of Jones” and the upcoming “Hidden Figures.” But it’s in “Moonlight” that he took our breath away. He stars in Part 1 as Juan, a high-ranking drug dealer in inner-city Miami. In this case, he takes the expectations of his hardened exterior and flips them, revealing a sensitive, loving man and eventual father figure to the central protagonist, Chiron. His final scene at his kitchen table is simply jaw-dropping. —BL
READ: “9 Questions With...Mahershala Ali”
Michelle Williams
Some actors’ faces are designed for the close-up. Williams, with her petite features and unassuming air, can take you by surprise within a camera’s frame (and on a stage—she earned a Tony nomination for “Blackbird” this year). Look at the way she grimaces in Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” a cloud of the quietest rage suddenly visible in her eyes, or the bravery with which she tackles raw grief in her powerhouse of a final scene in Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea.” If she’s shortlisted at this year’s Oscars, it would mean a whopping four nominations. Isn’t it about time for a win? —JS
Billy Crudup
In “20th Century Women”
Crudup can ground even the most erratic of characters. After his turns in last year’s “The Stanford Prison Experiment” as a morally questionable scientist and the Oscar-winning “Spotlight,” Crudup was poised for success in 2016. His role as an inquisitive reporter in the Oscar-contending “Jackie” imbued what could’ve been a boilerplate role with believable acumen. But it’s his achingly aimless William in “20th Century Women” that best showcases Crudup’s skill at remaining funny, vulnerable, and wise all at the same time. If his scenes opposite “Century” co-stars Greta Gerwig and Annette Bening are to serve as our litmus test, we can’t wait to see more from this actor. —Briana Rodriguez
Michael Shannon
Shannon has been featured in or starred in a grand total of 10 films this year—and that’s not even mentioning the five films he has in post- and preproduction, the one he’s currently filming with Guillermo del Toro, and the Broadway performance in the lengthy “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” that earned him a Tony nomination. The actor is a bona fide dynamo if we’ve ever seen one, and when examining the commitment he brings to each role—from a jaded Southern sheriff in “Nocturnal Animals” to a romantically possessive chef in the late-year release “Frank & Lola” and a taciturn reporter in “Loving”—the man is a machine we love to watch. —BR
READ: “How to Get Nominated for a Tony Award”
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