The best film performances of 2023
It's not just about who's going to win the Oscar—we're celebrating all of our favorite film performances this year, right down to the stand-out cameos

It’s not a controversial statement to say that Cillian Murphy turned in one of the best film performances of the year as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s massive biopic Oppenheimer, and it would be weird to not acknowledge his achievement on a year-end best-of list. But, in addition to the Murphys and the Robbies, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite under-the-radar turns, too. So, for our best performances of 2023 list, we decided to go big: 30 actors, ranging from starring roles to cameos, rom-coms to thrillers. It’s still nowhere near exhaustive; there were just too many good performances this year to mention all of them, but we’ve highlighted the ones that really stood out to us. Here, in alphabetical order, are The A.V. Club’s favorite film performances of the year.