The 7 Best Performances of 2015

From the return of everyone's favorite Millennium Falcon-er to the subtle, yet powerful performances by some of the biggest Hollywood heavyweights, 2015 was chock-full of on-screen moments that had us talking. Ahead, check out the seven stars who delivered performances to remember this year.

The mysterious Alejandro in the shadows of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario is many things — a wolf, the hitman of the title, a ruthless marksman — but at his core, he’s a man who’s lost everything to a never-ending war. Benicio Del Toro steals the movie late in the second act when he plunges deep into Alejandro’s broken humanity and drives home Sicario’s utterly bleak message about our world: that it’s set to repeat the same violent cycles, and the casualties will continue to rack up. Del Toro’s performance is a quiet one, but in Alejandro’s stillness we can measure his fall, from a lawyer with a family to a killer not above taking away someone else’s. — Kevin P. Sullivan

He made us cry in the trailer with a single line. So yes, it’s premature to declare Harrison Ford’s return as Han Solo one of the great performances of the year before any of us have actually seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But we’re going to go out on a limb and do it anyway. Over the past 38 years, Ford has been, at times, ambivalent about his most indelible character, but our love for the Millennium Falcon-er has never waned. It’s not just his smart-ass charm, or that he’s the franchise’s dashing romantic rogue and, with Chewbacca, half of its two-man cavalry. It’s because while we may admire Luke’s purity and Leia’s strength, Han is the one we know will save us — the one we want to cheer for. So how could we not choke up a little to see him again, older now but with that same soft smirk, standing next to his old fuzzball pal aboard the ship that launched a billion childhood fantasies, speaking for all of us: “Chewie, we’re home.” —Sean Smith

As Therese — an introverted shopgirl in 1952 Manhattan who experiences, through heartbreak, how it feels to truly fall in love — Rooney Mara conveys such a delicate metamorphosis that her performance risks being almost undetectable. The Cannes Film Festival jury felt the swoon, though, handing Mara its Best Actress prize for her role in Carol — which also felt like recognition for director Todd Haynes, who created the vaporously romantic environment in which Therese’s journey of discovery takes place. Not unlike her cool, coiled performance in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which earned her an Oscar nomination in 2012), Mara’s brilliance lies in her ability to simultaneously portray both vulnerability and tenacity. Her climactic scene, as Therese strides through a crowded restaurant, is not simply spellbinding to watch. For the actress and her character, it feels like a victory lap. —Joe McGovern

On most TV dramas, jilted wives are either objects of pity or schadenfreude. But as Helen on Showtime’s The Affair, Tierney turns the former Mrs. Noah Solloway into a far more complicated figure who accepts full responsibility for her actions, like forcing her artistic husband out of Harlem and into stodgy Park Slope or hooking up with her son’s doctor while her kids are still home. Helen might not be the world’s best wife or mother, but she refuses to play the victim, and somehow she earns more sympathy that way. By portraying Helen as a woman who’s a bit of an actress herself — a power mom who’s actively repressing the pot-smoking free spirit she was before she got married — Tierney doesn’t just deliver a great performance. It’s a multilayered performance within a performance. She gives Helen a depth that she never had in season 1, when Noah’s (Dominic West) perspective cast her as little more than a status-hungry lady who lunches. Tierney has captured the essence of a woman who’s still reminding herself (and viewers) that she’s more than just somebody’s wife. And whether she’s slurring the words to a Lucinda Williams song or casting judgment upon her ex by shooting him hilariously droll oh-you-can’t-be-serious expressions, she masters the mix of comedy and tragedy that is divorce. —Melissa Maerz

Probably best known for comedic turns in films like Jerry Maguire and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, Regina King showed off her Grand Canyon-sized range this year with a pair of dramatic roles. On ABC’s American Crime, she played a devout Muslim whose brother was the suspect in a murder investigation. The searing performance won her the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. And though she doesn’t have a statue to show for it (yet), her turn as Dr. Erika Murphy in the second season of HBO’s The Leftovers deserves equal praise. Residing in Miracle, Tex., a town that experienced no “departures” (i.e., the mysterious disappearance of 2 percent of the population), Erika and her husband, John (Kevin Carroll), seem to live an idyllic life with teen twins Michael (Jovan Adepo) and Evie (Jasmin Savoy Brown). But when Evie vanishes, the visage of the Murphy marriage begins to crack, and Erika’s rage burns through. King is by turns ferocious, fragile, and heartbreaking as she struggles to understand the loss of her child — and her faith. A highlight of the season: Erika’s sit-down with neighbor Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) in the sixth episode, titled “Lens,” which was like watching two tigers circling each other, looking for weaknesses. In a fair world, King will once again celebrate her strengths next year on the Emmy stage. —Tim Stack

With her shaved head, greased face, and prosthetic arm, Charlize Theron’s disabled heroine Imperator Furiosa has more grit, verve and empathy than the vast majority of characters — male or female — we get to see on screen today. And really, is there any other woman who could play that part as humanely as Theron? The ferocity is easy to believe. It’s the underlying vulnerability that draws you in. The moment when she falls to her knees in the middle of the desert realizing that her personal high-risk chase across the wasteland may have been for nothing is when the whole thing comes together. For that we can thank Theron, who suggested the scene as a way to highlight the gravity of the situation. “I was really happy for that moment,” says Theron. “It wasn’t in the script. It was a quick idea I had and George (Miller) made it work way more than I think I would have made it work on my own.” —Nicole Sperling

The great irony of a movie called The Martian is that it never would have worked without a leading man as recognizably down-to-Earth as Matt Damon. Mark Watney’s irreverent voice was essential to the success of Andy Weir’s hit novel, and a film adaptation could not achieve lift-off with someone who would just science his way off of the remote planet. He needed to science the s--t out of it. And Damon pulled it off with equal measures of humor, desperation, and hope in a performance captivating enough to make us care more about his potato crop than the alien world outside. —Kevin P. Sullivan