Top 10 Actress Performances of 2019

Because 2019 was a great year for film, it was undoubtedly a great year for performances as well. I love that four of the performers below were unknown to me as 2019 began, while others have careers that I’ve followed for decades. Be sure to share your favorites as well!

10. Park So-dam in Parasite

as Kim Ki-jung

Everyone in Parasite was perfect, but Park So-damn was the highlight for me. The sarcasm, the intelligence, the smoking – Kim Ki-jung committed to her “role” is such an amusing way. I still laugh at the way she corralled that boy and whipped him into shape.

9. Laura Dern in Marriage Story

as Nora Fanshaw

In Marriage Story, divorce is well-oiled machine, thanks in part to the crafty work of skilled divorce lawyer, Nora Fanshaw. Dern’s steely, charismatic take on this character was terrifying. I keep thinking of the brief scene where Dern and Ray Liotta’s character shake hands in a courthouse hallway. It’s all smiles and handshakes, until it’s a knife in the back.

8. Lupita Nyong’o in Us

as Adelaide Wilson & Red

Even though I ultimately thought Us let Lupita Nyong’o down, Nyong’o managed to deliver two great performances in the movie, often at the same time. Adelaide and Red were diametrically opposite, and it was such a thrill to watch Nyong’o juggle one character’s rationality with another’s insanity.

7. Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

as Sharon Tate

Margot Robbie gave us the version of Sharon Tate that we deserved. Robbie’s Tate wasn’t a victim, she was a wide-eyed, freshly talented Hollywood player on her way to making a name for herself. Robbie had an innocence to her here, a mystery that was so compelling. I get chills when I hear Robbie’s voice on the Cielo Drive loudspeaker toward the end of the film. She still has so much life to live.

6. Renée Zellweger in Judy

as Judy Garland

The Oscar-bait biopic performance is the closest thing Hollywood has for a scientific formula on how to win an Oscar. For the past several years, I’ve strained to believe that most of these performances actually deserved the Oscar (Best Actor 2014 and 2018, anyone?), but Zellweger lives up to the hype as Judy Garland. This will be the rare year that I have no problem with an actor utilizing that Oscar formula, and ultimately winning as a result.

5. Sofia Boutella in Climax

as Selva

I find a lot of value in an actor seemingly pushing themselves to the brink of madness. Like every performer in Climax, Sofia Boutella was stone cold sober when she shot the film. But in playing Selva, the good-spirited leader of a troupe of dancers who are all drugged with LSD, Boutella delivered one of the most convincing substance abuse performances I have ever seen. And that isn’t even mentioning Boutella’s incredible dancing that opens the film, which is arguably even more thrilling than Selva’s acid trip.

4. Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell

as Becky Something

Here’s another performance that feels just on the brink of insanity. Becky is a famed and deeply troubled punk rock star that we catch glimpses of over an 11-year period in Her Smell. We see Becky as a destructive nightmare, a buttoned-up mom, and, ultimately, as a woman struggling to make it through every day intact. Her Smell is a challenging film that deserved a bigger audience, if for no other reason than it contains Elisabeth Moss’ best work to date.

3. Sienna Miller in American Woman

as Debra

In July, I wrote that I feared American Woman would be too small of a film to be remembered come awards time. And sadly, that was right. The film premiered at TIFF in September 2018 and was quietly released in a handful of theaters for a week or so this past June. It’s a shame that the film didn’t get a better push, as it contains Sienna Miller’s finest work to date, as a woman who is relentlessly grief-stricken over the disappearance of her daughter. When the hell is Sienna Miller going to get her due?

2. Florence Pugh in Midsommar

as Dani

I’m embarrassed to admit that I still haven’t seen Lady Macbeth, the period piece indie from 2016 that put Florence Pugh on the map. So, the first time I saw Pugh was as the hopelessly devastated Dani in Midsommar. This character asks a lot out of Pugh, as Dani is almost always on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. And whether she’s playing Dani through confusion and tears, or cries and whispers, every note of this performance is convincing. Pugh makes us feel Dani’s pain in the most unsettling way possible.

1. Taylor Russell in Waves 

as Emily

There’s a scene midway through Waves that stole my heart. It’s the moment I knew I was in love with the film. Tyler (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is in a bad way and comes home good and trashed. As he starts vomiting in the bathroom, his timid younger sister, Emily, approaches him and holds him back to normalcy. She doesn’t yell or get angry at him for puking on the floor. Instead, she keeps whispering that things are okay, that he’ll be okay, that they’ll be okay. The way Taylor Russell approached this scene, with such a distinct gentleness and calm, completely made me fall in love with the character, and the film itself.

I have to choose my words carefully here, as I know a lot of people still haven’t seen Waves. But early in the film, Emily is treated as secondary. She comes in and out of scenes, sort of in the background, stepping up where she can. Later in the film, much to my delight, Emily is given plenty more to do, and the result is one of the finest coming-of-age performances I have ever seen. By this point, Emily has been through a lot in her life, and I found the snapshot sequences of Emily becoming an adult to be simply astounding. I love that in a year of intentionally loud and frantic performances, the one that stuck out the most for me was Russell’s poised and innocent take on Emily. Culturally speaking, we’re hit with more noise than ever before, and it’s great to see a character like Emily remind us that being kind still has its place in our world.

Honorable Mentions

More Best of 2019 Lists

Top 10 Films of 2019
Top 10 Actor Performances of 2019

Top 5 “Rotten” Films of 2019