Let’s be honest, superhero movies aren’t exactly known for their acting performances. Even more than other types of modern popcorn flicks, this breed of blockbuster typically hinges on the use (and quality) of visual effects and flashy action sequences, while prioritizing spectacle over substance. Similarly, far too many superhero movies—including those produced by Marvel Studios, in particular—have been more concerned with setting up the next installments of the franchise than they are with telling self-contained, character-driven stories. Success isn’t measured in acting accolades or critical acclaim as much as in ticket sales.
That said, there have still been many great performances in recent years that helped turn superhero movies into the most popular (and lucrative) mode of storytelling in Hollywood’s history. Given the outlandish, fantastic territory that these films tend to occupy (not to mention the sizable paychecks for their stars), some of the most gifted actors in the industry have donned capes and tights and seized chances to let loose in ways that other roles rarely afford.
In keeping with the theme of our coverage this week, this list will feature my picks for the top 10 performances from superhero movies that were released in the 21st century only—so 20th-century pioneers of the genre, such as Christopher Reeve (Superman), Michael Keaton (Batman), and Michelle Pfeiffer (Batman Returns) weren’t up for consideration. Likewise, great TV performances won’t be featured here either.
Now that we’ve gotten the preamble out of the way, let’s dive into my selections, none of which a single soul on the internet will take issue with, I’m sure.
Honorable Mentions
- Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight (2008)
- Chadwick Boseman as King T’Challa, Black Panther (2018)
- Josh Brolin as Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Birds of Prey (2020)
- Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, The Batman (2022)
10. Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Thunderbolts* (2025)
In Thunderbolts*, the film’s true villain isn’t the all-powerful Sentry, or the mastermind who’s manipulating him, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Instead, it’s depression. That may sound like too weighty or grandiose a topic for a Marvel movie to tackle, but it works, thanks to the leading performance of Florence Pugh.
Pugh is one of the best young actors in Hollywood, and as Yelena, she strikes the balance of comedy, action, and drama that encapsulates the MCU at its very best. Following her sister’s death, Yelena finds herself searching for a new sense of purpose to fill the emptiness in her life. Pugh packs her performance with the raw emotional depth that you won’t often find in a superhero movie, as Yelena deals not only with that loss, but also her feelings of abandonment after her (temporary) adopted parents left her as a child to resume her training as an assassin. At the same time, Pugh provides plenty of humor and badass superhero fanfare, including a breathtaking opening stunt—which the actor performed herself—that features Belova jumping off the second-tallest building in the world.
Thunderbolts* was well received by critics, yet the film ended its theatrical run earlier this month as a box office disappointment for Marvel Studios, as the success of the company’s releases continues to waver. Even so, Pugh’s standout performance is a testament to the actor’s versatility and star power, and it might have garnered even more attention had it arrived in an earlier era of the MCU.
9. Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Logan (2017)
“You’re waiting for me to die,” Xavier tells Wolverine near the beginning of Logan.
In Logan, Xavier is 90 years old and suffers from dementia, which causes violent telepathic seizures. After one of those seizures killed most of the remaining X-Men, Wolverine took Xavier and fled to Mexico, where he keeps the telepath on a medication that suppresses his powers. At times, Xavier can’t recognize Logan, and he curses and rambles about everything from old English nursery rhymes to commercials for Taco Bell. At other times, he’s lucid, showing glimpses of the kind, paternal figure who once ran a school for gifted youngsters.
Logan was new territory for Stewart in his fifth appearance as Professor Xavier. Dating back to 2000’s X-Men, Stewart’s Professor X had always played an important role in the franchise, but he was never really one of its leads. Logan finally provided that opportunity, while also allowing Stewart to explore new sides of Xavier as the character faced old age, loneliness, and grief. And Stewart took full advantage of the rich material to deliver a somber, impactful sendoff for a beloved character almost two decades after originally taking on the role.
Stewart returned as Xavier for a brief (and rather thankless) appearance in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and is set to reprise the role yet again in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, as the MCU continues to tap the nostalgia well until it runs dry. But nothing will top his turn in James Mangold’s Logan, the film that served as the true conclusion to Fox’s X-Men franchise.
8. Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr, X-Men: First Class (2011)
When it comes to live-action portrayals of Magneto, Ian McKellen walked so Michael Fassbender could run.
McKellen delivered a classic performance in the role of Erik Lehnsherr in the original X-Men trilogy, but—not unlike Stewart as Xavier—the revered English actor was underutilized as the films largely focused on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That changed when the X-Men franchise was rebooted in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, as the prequel shifted its attention to younger versions of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Lehnsherr (Fassbender) at the start of their storied friendship and rivalry.
First Class has its fair share of flaws, but it nails the parts that focus on Xavier and Lehnsherr’s relationship. And Fassbender, in particular, makes terrific use of his time in the spotlight. The scene that follows Erik to Argentina as the Holocaust survivor exacts his revenge on former Nazis is one of the best that came out of any of the X-Men prequel films:
As Magneto, Fassbender demonstrates why the ruthless mutant has always been the consummate counterpart to the idealistic Professor Xavier. He delivers a nuanced performance that is full of palpable rage and trauma, while still maintaining Erik’s measured and dignified facade. It’s rare for a film franchise to cast the same character so perfectly more than once, and Fox’s X-Men movies did it twice with both Magneto and Xavier.
7. Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius, Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Willem Dafoe’s appearance as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man is a tough act to follow (see below), but Alfred Molina delivers a timeless villain performance of his own as Doctor Otto Octavius in Spider-Man 2.
Octavius is a brilliant, if overambitious, nuclear scientist and loving husband, until tragedy strikes. When his fusion power machine becomes unstable during a public demonstration, his wife is killed, and his suit’s four mechanical arms—which were previously under his control—meld with his body and begin to warp his mind. And Molina is just as convincing as a distinguished inventor as he is in his steep descent into madness.
As Doctor Octopus, Molina becomes the kind of menacing, monstrous figure that director Sam Raimi can work wonders with. Otto’s natural intelligence takes on a more cunning edge as he sacrifices his moral compass to build a machine that’s capable of sustaining itself, even though by doing so he jeopardizes the safety of the city. Octavius’s mechanical tentacles become scene partners for Molina, as the mad scientist shifts between fighting for control of their shared body and relinquishing it altogether.
In the end, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) helps Octavius recognize how he’s lost his way, and the scientist sacrifices himself in a bittersweet conclusion that allows him to find some shred of redemption. “I will not die a monster,” he says before plunging himself into the Hudson River along with his greatest invention. Molina’s Octavius is one of several prototypical sympathetic villains on this list, and he remains unmatched by the many Spidey villains who have followed him.
6. Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger, Black Panther (2018)
With the possible exception of the inevitable Thanos in Infinity War, no villain in the history of the MCU has been more memorable in a single film than Black Panther’s Erik Killmonger. That speaks to Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole’s terrific writing, but it’s also a by-product of the sheer intensity that Jordan brings to the role.
The 2018 film does a great job of establishing Killmonger’s tragic backstory, which inspires his eventual uprising in Wakanda decades later. Erik’s father, Prince N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), was killed by his own brother, the king of Wakanda, while working undercover in Oakland. As a result, Erik gets deserted in a foreign land without his father to care for him. He grows up to become a Navy SEAL and, later, a deadly black ops mercenary, as he prepares to make his claim to the Wakandan throne. And Jordan instills in him a fury and pain befitting a lost child who has committed his entire life to vengeance.
While Jordan’s ferocious, primal Killmonger performance may be a bit more one-note than some of the other entries on this list, it fits the character and serves as an effective contrast to Chadwick Boseman’s stately and collected T’Challa. Killmonger carries a distinct swagger in his righteous quest to tear down Wakanda’s traditions and isolationist ways, and liberate oppressed Black people around the world who have been abandoned by Wakanda, as he was.
At the end of Black Panther, as Killmonger watches the Wakandan sunset for the first—and last—time, Jordan delivers one of the most poignant lines in the MCU: “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, ’cause they knew death was better than bondage.”
5. Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Coogler’s Black Panther sequel had the impossible task of filling the tremendous void that Boseman—and his iconic portrayal of King T’Challa—left behind following his death in 2020. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever didn’t try to replace Boseman with another star so much as it centered the grief over his loss, transferred from the real world into the fictional Wakanda. It’s a tricky concept for a superhero blockbuster to be based on, but the film achieves it largely on the strength of Angela Bassett’s powerhouse performance as Queen Ramonda.
As Ramonda’s daughter Shuri (Letitia Wright) and the people of Wakanda mourn the loss of King T’Challa, the queen bears the burden of acting as her nation’s ruler and ambassador to the outside world. She delivers a gripping speech before the United Nations near the start of the film that serves as a reminder of Wakanda’s strength, even in the absence of its protector. Ramonda is a mesmerizing, fearsome force—but she also lets her guard down in the presence of Shuri, as she tries to help her only living family member come to terms with her brother’s death. Bassett supplies one of the most gut-wrenching moments of the film after general Okoye (Danai Gurira) later lets Shuri get captured by the Talokanil, as Ramonda finally releases her repressed pain and anger before her loyal subjects.
Bassett’s performance in Wakanda Forever may be the rawest, most devastating feat of acting in any superhero movie. As the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022, she relied on a formative acting lesson as she channeled her personal grief over Boseman’s death to inform her character’s emotional journey.
“I’m experiencing grief, having lost this dear, dear brother, who plays my son,” Bassett explained. “We are all going through this grief. I mean, literal tears every day on the set as we’re sitting on the set where we sat with him, not knowing what we now know as we try to strike lightning again. It comes back to me, those two words, ‘Use it,’ to express a mother’s grief, and a mother’s love, and a mother’s loss, a mother’s fierceness, and a mother’s tenacity. All those.”
4. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Iron Man (2008)
“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!”
Jeff Bridges’s Obadiah Stane screamed this line at one of his bumbling scientists in Iron Man in response to their inability to reproduce Stark’s miniaturized arc reactor despite their vast resources. And it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to liken Stark’s technological breakthrough to what Downey did for the MCU in 2008.
Iron Man was the big bang that launched the MCU. While director Jon Favreau and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige deserve a lot of the credit, Downey’s performance as the charismatic, arrogant genius laid the foundation that each subsequent MCU project has built on.
After 17 years, and more than $31 billion generated across dozens of movies, it’s easy to forget that Marvel Studios took a big risk in casting Downey in the franchise’s first leading role, considering the actor’s scandalous history with substance abuse. But that reputation helped sell Stark’s on-screen evolution as he slowly peels back his playboy persona to discover his inner humanity.
Downey might’ve turned in an even better performance in what should have been his final appearance in the MCU in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, but I’m giving this one to his introduction as Iron Man for the formative part it played in the most successful blockbuster machine of all time.
3. Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn, Spider-Man (2002)
Even more so than 2000’s X-Men or 1998’s Blade, Spider-Man proved the box office potential of Marvel superheroes, long before Downey suited up as Iron Man for the first time. Tobey Maguire was a great fit to play the leading Peter Parker (despite being a 26-year-old playing a high schooler), but Willem Dafoe was an indelible foil as Norman Osborn.
In Spider-Man, Dafoe essentially acts in multiple roles after Osborn’s personality is split in the lab accident that transforms him into the Green Goblin. In any given scene, he might be the pretentious, desperate businessman and aloof father; or the chaotic, murderous villain; or the feeble, confused victim who’s trying to make sense of what’s happening to him. In one of his many highlights in the film, Dafoe plays all of those personas at once, as Osborn speaks directly to his inner Goblin in the mirror:
Dafoe contorts his face in improbable directions, and widens and squints his eyes at a rhythmic pace, as a maniacal grin takes shape. His screen presence is terrifying, and endlessly captivating. In any other context, Dafoe’s embellishments might be over the top, but within the confines of a superhero movie and Raimi’s distinct filmmaking style, he’s a comic book villain brought to life.
2. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Logan (2017)
In Jackman’s breakout as Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men, the Australian actor perfectly captured the core elements of the beloved character from the comics: a tough guy with a tortured past who had an adamantium skeleton and a heart of gold. In X-Men, Wolverine was introduced as a lost mutant who had no memories of his life before he was experimented on by the government. By the time Logan was released in 2017, Jackman had starred in four X-Men movies across two trilogies (excluding cameos), plus two solo Wolverine films. Audiences had witnessed Wolverine’s entire journey during those 17 years, and all the pain he endured along the way, including the events that he’d once forgotten.
With the weight of all of that on-screen history in tow, along with the deaths of the X-Men that took place before the events of Logan, Wolverine’s tortured past is heightened and tangible in the culmination of his solo trilogy. And with the creative freedom that an R-rating affords, Logan gives Jackman the chance to dial up his performance as Wolverine to thrilling, and brutal, new levels.
In Logan, Jackman plays a version of Wolverine who’s older, tired, and sick, his body no longer able to heal itself. Aside from Xavier, everyone he once cared about is gone. He starts the film as a shell of the legendary mutant who fought alongside the X-Men, and Jackman channels all of the rage and sadness that has festered in him. But Logan slowly draws out the real Wolverine after he meets his genetically engineered daughter and learns to be a hero one last time.
Logan is a phenomenal final chapter to Jackman’s Wolverine story—even if an afterword has taken shape in the MCU, beginning with 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s hard to imagine that any actor will ever be able to match that longevity and legacy in a superhero role again.
1. Heath Ledger as the Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)
My sincerest apologies for the predictable finish, but (why so) seriously: Is there anyone else who could’ve made the top spot of this list?
Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight is an all-timer, and not just within our narrowed focus of superhero movies: It was even selected as the sixth-best movie performance of the 21st century on The Ringer’s overall ranking. Not unlike the position that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy holds in the pantheon of superhero flicks, Ledger’s portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime is in a league of its own.
So many movie villains work only when they’re sympathetic; when you can understand their motivations and view them as more than just another dastardly adversary for the hero to inevitably defeat. But Ledger’s Joker is the rare villain for whom that requirement simply doesn’t apply. The mystery and eerie uncertainty surrounding him becomes part of his intoxicating allure. As Alfred (Michael Caine) tells Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) when he’s trying to rationalize the Joker’s motives, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
