26 Coolest and Most Inspired Acting Oscar Nominated Performances This Century (So Far)

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Ellen Burstyn - Denzel Washington - Stephanie Hsu - Brad Pitt -- Lupita Nyong'o

The Oscars were never meant to be a museum (no shade to the actual Academy Museum).

They are a living record of what performance, film and art can look like when craft, courage and cultural timing collide. Since the turn of the century, Oscar-nominated acting has expanded far beyond prestige archetypes.

We’ve seen movie stars dismantle their personas, character actors seize once-in-a-lifetime spotlights, international performers redefine what Hollywood deems “universal” and first-timers arrive fully formed, carrying entire films on instinct rather than résumé.

What binds the most inspiring acting nominees of this century is not merely garnering rave reviews. It’s also about risk, and these performances often challenged voter comfort, resisted sentimentality or refused to explain themselves. Inspiration, in this context, isn’t limited to victory speeches or cultural firsts, although those do matter. It’s found in the way Ellen Burstyn aged in real time on-screen without vanity, or how Riz Ahmed turned silence into a language or in how Quvenzhané Wallis used childhood imagination against despair.

This list isn’t about the “best acting” in the clinical sense. It’s about performances that expanded the vocabulary of mainstream cinema, redefined what Oscar recognition could look like in the modern era and have made an indelible impression. Some won, some lost, but none faded.

From 2000 until now, these are the coolest and most inspiring picks by the Actors Branch.

Honorable mentions: Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids” (2011); Joaquin Phoenix, “Joker” (2019), Marisa Tomei, “In the Bedroom” (2001)

Maria Bakalova — ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’

Image Credit: Courtesy of Amazon Studios

Maria Bakalova performed without a safety net. She navigated real people, unpredictable chaos and a fictional character arc simultaneously. Her work borders on miraculous. Bakalova’s nomination broke barriers for Eastern European actresses and guerrilla-style filmmaking, showing the Academy could embrace experimental work when execution is undeniable. She made the absurd feel human, which is perhaps the most complex acting challenge imaginable.
Brad Pitt — ‘Moneyball’ (2011)

Image Credit: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Surprised by a Brad Pitt Oscar nom?

That’s because Pitt dismantled movie-star vanity. His Billy Beane is all clenched jaws and unfinished sentences, showing power told through restraint. The turn redefined leading-man masculinity, presenting vulnerability as strength rather than weakness. Pitt’s work helped legitimize sports dramas as Oscar vehicles beyond traditional triumph narratives, focusing on the process rather than the victory.
Regina King — ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ (2018)

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Regina King’s work is a maternal ferocity. She proved, in multiple sequences in Barry Jenkins’ masterful James Baldwin adaptation, that an entire performance can be defined by absolute clarity. She elevated Jenkins’ lyrical filmmaking through grounded fury, showing how Black women can still feel like leading work even when presence overwhelms screen time.
Andrew Garfield — ‘Tick, Tick…Boom!’

Image Credit: Macall Polay/Netflix

Andrew Garfield channels the ambition and spirit of Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s outstanding directorial debut. With musical virtuosity, Garfield’s singing and acting are simultaneously compelling without sacrificing either, raising the bar for musical biopics.
America Ferrera — ‘Barbie’ (2023)

Image Credit: Warner Bros.

America Ferrera’s monologue in “Barbie” became instant cultural shorthand. She bridges Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored satire with genuine feminist reckoning, anchoring a billion-dollar spectacle in lived frustration. Ferrera gave voice to feelings audiences didn’t realize needed articulation, turning a supporting role into the film’s emotional thesis.
Jesse Plemons — ‘The Power of the Dog’ (2021)

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Jesse Plemons breaks your heart in Jane Campion’s dark western. He carved out a space in a film dominated by showier performances, proving that a supporting player can be radical through subtraction rather than addition. The work of character actors who build dread through stillness and shape how masculinity and complicity are portrayed in Westerns and period pieces was reinvented in its entirety in the modern era.
Samantha Morton — ‘In America’ (2002)

Image Credit: ©Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection

Samantha Morton strips away every protective layer, delivering grief as a constant undercurrent. Her performance in Jim Sheridan’s loving family drama redefined naturalistic acting in the 2000s, proving emotional transparency could compete with showier work. She captures how loss reshapes every gesture, breath and interaction without announcing it. The nomination validated quieter, less calculated performances in a category often dominated by big swings.
Yuh-jung Youn — ‘Minari’ (2020)

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

Yuh-jung Youn delivered a grandmother in Lee Isaac Chung’s beautiful gem, who is mischievous, abrasive, tender and unpredictable — all at the same time. Her Oscar win broke barriers for Asian and Korean actresses, bridging generations and cultures through specificity. Her acceptance speech became an instant legend, matching the performance’s fearless honesty, and was handed to her by Brad Pitt no less.
Naomie Harris — ‘Moonlight’ (2016)

Image Credit: Courtesy of A24

Naomie Harris disappears into addiction in Barry Jenkins’ surprise (and worthy) best picture winner. Her work gives the character dignity even in collapse, embodying the film’s central tension between love and damage between a mother and child. Harris expanded how Black motherhood and addiction have been portrayed onscreen, refusing stereotypes while honoring the soul of the story.
Jackie Earle Haley — ‘Little Children’ (2006)

Image Credit: ©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

Jackie Earle Haley’s registered sex offender refuses easy categorization, locating danger inside vulnerability rather than menace. Every scene pulses with unease that never resolves, forcing viewers to examine their own discomfort in Todd Field’s “Little Children.” The performance resurrected Haley’s career while proving that character actors could command Oscar attention through fearlessness alone. It expanded what supporting actor work could interrogate, making the category less about charm and more about necessary provocation.
Quvenzhané Wallis — ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ (2012)

Image Credit: ©Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection

Quvenzhané Wallis embodies imagination as survival, becoming the youngest-ever best actress nominee at age 9. Wallis doesn’t perform emotion in Benh Zeitlin’s stunning debut; she inhabits it so thoroughly that acting seems besides the point. Her recognition influenced how filmmakers cast and direct children.
Diane Lane — ‘Unfaithful’ (2002)

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Diane Lane charts a desire and awakening into self-destruction with terrifying consequences. Lane’s courage lives in how exposed she allows herself to be. She uses eroticism as an emotional reckoning, and not just a fantasy. Her nom showed actresses could play complicated sexuality in their 40s and receive recognition for it, challenging Hollywood’s narrow view of female desire onscreen.
Lesley Manville — ‘Phantom Thread’ (2017)

Image Credit: ©Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collect / Everett Collection

Lesley Manville’s Cyril in Paul Thomas Anderson’s fashion story is power incarnated. Every glance, pause and tonal shift is a micro-adjustment that commands absolute control. It’s acting as architecture, an invisible structure that holds everything together while others claim the spotlight.
Ariana DeBose — ‘West Side Story’ (2021)

Image Credit: Photo by NIKO TAVERNISE / 20th Century Studios

Ariana DeBose exploded onscreen with precision and musical storytelling in perfect synthesis. Her Anita honors Rita Moreno’s legacy in Steven Spielberg’s remake while asserting her own authority. DeBose’s triumph as the first Afro-Latina and openly queer woman to claim the supporting actress award represents progress alongside virtuosity. Now all we need is for Hollywood to offer her more roles worthy of such a talent.
John C. Reilly — ‘Chicago’ (2002)

Image Credit: ©Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

John C. Reilly had a 2002 film year that most actors dream about. Acclaimed works in “Gangs of New York,” “The Hours” and his Oscar-nominated work in “Chicago.” He transformed “Mr. Cellophane” from comic relief into the film’s bruised conscience. While everyone around him explodes in razzle-dazzle, Reilly delivers quiet devastation in a man so emotionally invisible he’s become transparent even to himself. The performance helped legitimize movie musicals in the early 2000s by grounding spectacle in recognizable human cost.
Ian McKellen — ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ (2001)

Image Credit: ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett C

Ian McKellen grounded Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy in emotional truth and gave a trilogy its soul. His Gandalf carries wisdom and authority without arrogance. The nom legitimized genre acting as Oscar-worthy, proving that fantasy performances could be as meaningfully profound as those in prestige drama.
Shohreh Aghdashloo — ‘House of Sand and Fog’ (2003)

Image Credit: ©DreamWorks/Courtesy Everett Collection

Shohreh Aghdashloo’s voice brings a Shakespearean gravity to an immigrant tragedy, playing a woman who holds her family together through pride that becomes a prison. The restraint devastates more than any outburst could. Aghdashloo’s nomination for Vadim Perelman’s drama opened doors for Middle Eastern actresses in American cinema, proving that an accent and specificity enhance rather than limit awards consideration.
Halle Berry — ‘Monster’s Ball’ (2001)

Image Credit: Everett Collection

Halle Berry’s historic win as the first Black woman to claim best actress shaped industry assumptions about what Black actresses were allowed to do onscreen. Berry’s courage opened doors, but it also became a cautionary tale about Hollywood’s failure to sustain that progress. The performance in Marc Foster’s drama is a refusal to sanitize pain or desperation. She creates something new entirely.
Riz Ahmed — ‘Sound of Metal’ (2020)

Image Credit: Courtesy of Amazon Studios

Riz Ahmed makes the silence devastating, transforming sensory loss into an awakening. He delivers one of the most immersive performances of the century in a work that is rigorously physical and unsentimental. Ahmed’s work in writer-director Darius Marder’s remarkable “Sound of Metal” influenced how sound design and performance interact, teaching actors that restraint can communicate more than a mere demonstration.
Stephanie Hsu — ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

Stephanie Hsu anchors the Daniels’ multiverse comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” with varied transformations, but a single heart focused on the story and the vision. While her co-stars Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis all won Oscars, it’s her performance that remains the most memorable and vibrant, standing out years after the credits rolled.
Jeffrey Wright — ‘American Fiction’ (2023)

Image Credit: Courtesy of TIFF

Jeffrey Wright uses his intelligence for comedy, balancing satire and sorrow in Cord Jefferson’s outstanding gem. His work influenced how race, art and commerce are portrayed onscreen, proving comedy and fury can coexist (if we allow it to). His Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (and his faux-author persona) becomes a witty philosophy, teaching future actors what they can do when they subvert the world’s expectations of them.
Ellen Burstyn — ‘Requiem for a Dream’ (2000)

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Ellen Burstyn charts her descent into addiction and psychosis with a terrifying, unflinching clarity in Darren Aronofsky’s drama. An emotionally annihilating turn showing loneliness calcifying into obsession, before collapsing into horror. Her work is often unbearable (by how raw she plays it) and essential, showing that great acting can traumatize while demanding you to witness it.
Yalitza Aparicio — ‘Roma’ (2018)

Image Credit: Image by Alfonso Cuarón

Yalitza Aparicio’s debut is defined by her presence in Alfonso Cuaron’s Mexican drama. She foregrounded domestic labor as a cinematic epic, giving visibility to Indigenous Mexican women that the world routinely ignores and vilifies. Her nom sparked crucial conversations about representation, class, and who gets to be a movie star.
Fernanda Torres — ‘I’m Still Here’ (2024)

Image Credit: Adrian Teijido/Sony Pictures Classics

A barrier-breaking nomination, career-defining performance and embodiment of a woman’s (and country) survival. Fernanda Torres’ work in Walter Salles’ Brazilian drama proves great acting assembles, scene by scene, until grief becomes an endurance testimony. Torres represents everything Oscar claims to value but rarely rewards: international excellence, political courage, and restraint over showmanship.
Lupita Nyong’o — ’12 Years a Slave’ (2013)

Lupita Nyong’o’s debut is devastating. She shows suffering portrayed as a stolen humanity rather than an endurance. Her eyes carry terror, history and impossible resolve compressed into shattering moments. The performance announced a major artist instantly while helping Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” secure its best picture win through sheer cinematic force. She made the unbearable watchable through dignity that never flinched.
Denzel Washington — ‘Training Day’ (2001)

Image Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Denzel Washington detonated his charisma into a menace, subverting his entire star persona to create one of cinema’s great villains. His Alonzo Harris in Antoine Fuqua’s classic crime story is seductive even as he becomes monstrous. Washington’s win came as the second for a leading Black man, teaching that star power properly weaponized becomes more compelling than any character work. He made evil irresistible, which is cinema’s most difficult magic trick.