The decade is only half over, but let’s start this process anyway. I’ll add the new winners in this category each year and update the ranking. So please hang in there while this list builds. If you want more in the meantime, you can always check out the other decades that have been finished.
As usual, I must remind you that whether or not a win was deserved cannot impact its standing in the rank (although I will comment on who I think should have won in each year). These lists are also fluid constructs for me. I reserve the right to revisit the movies and performances that won over time and re-evaluate where they belong in the ranking. The Academy is stuck with winners once they hand out awards but I am free to change my mind.
5. Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer (2023)
To be clear: I do not think Robert Downey, Jr. gives a bad performance in Oppenheimer. This is one of those circumstances where we have a great group of performances and one has to come in last. I could believe that the five performances ranked as of now could easily be in the top six by the end of the decade, but we’ll have to see how that works out.
As the de facto villain of Oppenheimer, Robert Downey, Jr. makes you forget about all the time he spent playing Iron Man in Marvel movies—which is no small feat given how dominant (and beloved) he was in that character. His performance reminds you of the top-tier actor he was before addiction sidelined his career and Marvel brought him back to the mainstream. Sure, the makeup helps a great deal. But it’s the performance itself that gives Downey’s politician his heart (or lack thereof).
Should have won in 2023: I admit, I didn’t expect to be wowed by Robert Downey, Jr. when I saw Oppenheimer. But I was. He deserved this win.
4. Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (2024)
Here is where we enter what will be a recurring refrain in this ranking: this is not a supporting performance. You could argue that Culkin’s costar (and writer/director) Jesse Eisenberg forms more of the framework that the character arcs follow, but in my mind there is no way that Eisenberg and Culkin aren’t co-leads. So in my universe, I would move Culkin out of this category and over to Best Actor, where he would most likely get a nomination but not a win. Regardless, here we are.
Following two cousins as they travel in Poland, the country their family had to flee in order to survive WWII, A Real Pain explores the generational trauma that shaped their family and the fraught dynamic between two men who were once close but have drifted apart as one (Eisenberg) grew up and the other (Culkin) got lost. Culkin does a great job capturing his character’s frenetic energy and inscrutable pain. He masterfully pivots between effortless, caring charisma and uncontrollable anger and frustration, turning emotions on a dime so that even the viewer feels the unease of walking on eggshells around him. As someone who grew up with a parent whose moods could fluctuate unpredictably (and dangerously), Culkin’s performance felt familiar to me.
If his character feels a touch underdeveloped to me, I think it’s a flaw of Eisenberg’s screenplay more than a problem of Culkin’s performance. And if I found myself irritated by the film’s Woody Allen-esque nervous energy and overthought talkative dialogue, I once again feel it’s important to absolve Culkin of this issue. But it is a bit hard to shake a sensation that Culkin’s performance lacks a center, hitting all the external beats that it needs to without giving the character a soul.
Should have won in 2024: With Culkin moved to Best Actor, the path would be cleared for Yura Borisov to win for his quiet but fascinating work in Anora. His character doesn’t speak for large parts of the movie, but Borisov does more with his facial expressions and eyes to tell the viewer everything they need to know about how his character is reacting to what he sees happening around him. And when he does start to talk more, he powerfully establishes what director Sean Baker had been getting at all along.
3. Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah (2020)
The biggest potential issue with Daniel Kaluuya winning in this category is that he’s essentially a co-lead. It certainly doesn’t help that Lakeith Stanfield, his costar, was inexplicably nominated in the same category, implying that Judas and the Black Messiah has no lead performer. With category fraud fairly rampant in Hollywood these days, it’s easy to get angry–especially when the winner in this category the previous year, Brad Pitt, was also his film’s co-lead. Unlike Pitt, however, I think there’s room to allow Kaluuya to stand as a supporting performance. So I would bump Stanfield to the Best Actor race (where he still loses) and let Kaluuya remain.
As for the performance, it’s outstanding. Kaluuya is fiery as Black Panther Fred Hampton, who was killed during a raid after being betrayed by an FBI informant within his organization. His passion for his cause is delicately balanced by surprisingly tender scenes with Dominique Fishback as his love interest. I have some quibbles with the movie’s structure, but the three central performances (Stanfield, Kaluuya, and Fishback) are outstanding. Most surprising for me was the revelation that Kaluuya is extremely British. I had absolutely no idea from seeing his great performances in Get Out, Black Panther, and this.
Should have won in 2020: You can quibble with Kaluuya’s category if you want, but I’m okay with putting him in Supporting Actor and letting the win stand. His closest competition for me would have been Glynn Turman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
2. Troy Kotsur, CODA (2021)
There’s beautiful emotional and physical shading in Troy Kotsur’s performance that pretty easily pulls him ahead of Kaluuya’s impressive pyrotechnics for me. Kotsur’s fisherman father is many things: funny, inappropriate, hardworking, weary, and scared about how he will manage to get by in a world of hearing men (in a field where hearing is judged by many to be essential). But the scene where he asks his daughter to sing for him so he can feel the vibration of her voice is, to me, unforgettable. And his expression as he watches a hearing audience react to his daughter singing? Equally impressive.
Should have won in 2021: In a year without Kotsur, Kodi Smit-McPhee would have been a strong contender for The Power of the Dog, and so would the un-nominated Mike Faist from West Side Story. Unluckily for them, they competed against Kotsur, who deserved to win.
1. Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Similar to Michelle Yeoh, who won for Best Actress the same year, Quan’s performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once is impressive because it wildly swings between different genres. For Quan, a lot of those shifts happen within the same scene. So he can start a scene as the sad, introspective husband who doesn’t know how to connect with his wife, then immediately pivot to become a suave secret agent sending that wife on a secret mission. Or he might have to make the audience laugh. Or perform an outrageous stunt. Or he might have to do a combination of both, as when he earns laughs by using a fanny pack as a deadly weapon.
But the real success of Quan’s performance is that he gives Everything its heart, managing to deliver lines that could have felt cloying or overly sentimental in a less assured performance. Instead, he provides the movie’s heart and waits for the other characters to catch up.
A Hollywood veteran thanks to his appearances in 1980s classics The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as a kid, Quan had essentially retired thanks to a lack of opportunities as an Asian American actor. Thankfully, Everything showed off the incredible range of talent Quan has, and hopefully he will get to deploy it more frequently in the future.
Should have won in 2022: I do wonder if Quan is actually a co-lead of his movie, which would make him a more appropriate contender in Best Actor. But since the movie really allows Michelle Yeoh to do a lot of the heavy lifting (and the plot follows her character more closely), I’m okay with the way things played out. But pour one out for Barry Keoghan, who was spectacular in The Banshees of Inisherin in what should have been a thankless role.
Other Rankings for the 2020s
Supposedly Fun 
I don’t begrudge Downey an Oscar but he’s easily my fifth choice of last year
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