There are no small parts, only small actors, goes the famous saying often attributed to the pioneering theater practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski.
It’s good advice for performers just paving their way in the industry. But it’s also something that the pros take to heart. Think of how many of your favorites have had their careers defined by roles with relatively minuscule screen times: Has Alec Baldwin had a more iconic big-screen turn than his A-B-C speech in Glengarry Glen Ross? Are firecrackers the first thing you think of when you hear Alfred Molina’s name? Has anyone ever brought more fire and brimstone to a single scene than Ned Beatty in Network?
In honor of our list and package of the best movie performances of the 21st century, we wanted to celebrate the actors who put up the highest single-movie PER since 2000. We have only two rules for this exercise:
- All performances must be under 10 minutes. (We used Screen Time Central whenever possible, but in some cases, we had to use other sources or count on our fingers.)
- In the spirit of brevity, we made all of the blurbs for this list shorter than 100 words.
So, let’s get started. Because we really don’t have much time.
The Best Movie Performances of the Century
10. David Lynch, The Fabelmans
Total screen time: 2:49
All due respect to Judd Hirsch—whose eight-minute Oscar-nominated turn in The Fabelmans is the very definition of art—but Lynch playing a cigar-chomping, eye-patch-rocking John Ford for one scene in his last film appearance has to get the nod here. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve watched a movie scene and clocked where the horizon is since I watched Lynch drop science on a young Sammy Fabelman. Steven Spielberg directing David Lynch playing John Ford had high potential to be a directorial circle jerk, but this was anything but boring as shit. —Justin Sayles
Honorable Mention: The Cowboy, Mulholland Drive
Total screen time: 3:03
Speaking of David Lynch, it’s only right to get one of his creations on this list, even if it’s only as an honorable mention. While not as terrifying as Robert Blake’s eyebrow-less specter in Lost Highway a few years earlier, Monty Montgomery’s monologue in Mulholland Drive remains one of the most unsettling things Lynch ever committed to celluloid. Hopefully, we only see him once, because that means we did good. —Sayles
9. Casey Affleck, Oppenheimer
Total screen time: 2:36
In a movie full of tension, terror, and characters with questionable motives, Affleck’s Communist-hating Colonel Pash is Oppenheimer’s bogeyman—and it takes only a matter of seconds for him to establish that status. Affleck doesn’t even need General Groves’s testimony of Pash as a scary motherfucker; his mix of deliberateness, steeliness, and doggedness is disquieting enough. You don’t see Pash again after Oppenheimer’s brief exchange with him, but the danger Affleck imparts hangs over the second half of the film. —Andrew Gruttadaro
8. Parker Posey, Best in Show
Total screen time: 9:33
The Swans in Best in Show are like the high-IQ couple in Idiocracy that never has kids. (Except, you know, they ain’t all that smart in the end.) These characters are stuck in the liminal space between the ’90s and the new millennium—remember when Starbucks was a signifier of “highbrow” taste as opposed to the only reliable public restroom around?—but Posey’s Meg remains the perfect avatar for the type of DINK obsessed with their dog (also yelling at service staff). The first part is relatable. The second part we’ll have to forgive, just so we don’t provoke her. —Sayles
7. Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born
Total screen time: 8:45
I don’t need 100 words. I just need 10 seconds. The 10 seconds after Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine tells his brother, played by Sam Elliott, that it was him he idolized all these years, rather than their dad. When Elliott puts his truck in reverse and turns to back out of Jackson’s driveway, his eyes well up, and a semblance of fear—of finally being seen, of having to confront decades worth of repressed emotions—is plastered on his face.
These are maybe the best 10 seconds put to film in the 21st century. —Gruttadaro
6. Amy Poehler, Mean Girls
Total screen time: 2:10
It may be a conflict of interest to include a Ringer coworker. (And if we’re including Ringer coworkers, then why not Chris Ryan in Takehunter 2?) But since we already included Regina George on our main list of the 101 best movie performances of the 21st century, it’s only right to include her cool mom here. —Sayles
5. Tom Cruise, Tropic Thunder
Total screen time: About nine minutes
You have to understand where Tom Cruise was as a public figure in 2008. Couches had been jumped on. Matt Lauer had been called “glib.” The anger that lives within Cruise had been subverted. And so it was astounding to see this disconcerting person step into an extremely hairy fat suit and scream all-out obscenities into a cellphone. And seeing him put as much intensity and effort into this vulgar studio head as he did Ethan Hunt or Frank T.J. Mackey was revelatory. This is why we can’t help but love the guy—he’ll always do whatever it takes. —Gruttadaro
Actor Spotlights
4. John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac
Total screen time: 5:26
Is Zodiac a horror movie? It is for the time that John Carroll Lynch is on-screen. Lynch plays Arthur Leigh Allen, long considered the main suspect in the unsolved Zodiac killings from the late ’60s. David Fincher reportedly instructed Lynch to play the role as though he believed he was innocent—yet, the more innocent he plays it, the more guilty he seems. It’s a remarkable feat of acting and directing—one that makes you marvel at how Lynch could be so adept at playing a character with simmering ominousness but also someone as doting as Norm Gunderson. —Sayles
3. Matthew McConaughey, The Wolf of Wall Street
Total screen time: 5:59
You’re not even eight minutes into the movie, and he’s already threatening to steal the whole thing. Hey. Hey-mm. Hey-mm mmm mmm mm. Hmm mm. Hay hay. Hmm mm. Hay hay. Still incredibly gaunt from Dallas Buyers Club, talking about the deep importance of onanism, ripping “tootskis.” He is the devil, opening the doors of Wall Street and unlocking the real monster inside of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort. And yet. Don’t you wanna step inside too? The song he sings is so alluring. Hmm mm. Hay hay. Hmm mm. Hay hay. —Gruttadaro
2. Mark Wahlberg, The Departed
Total screen time: 9:21
Mark Wahlberg is in The Departed for less than 10 minutes, yet there are YouTube compilations of his best scenes that run over five minutes long. Now that’s efficiency. Dialogue flies at a mile a minute in The Departed—r’s are dropped at a record rate—and it turns out that that is exactly Wahlberg’s tempo. “I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.” “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.” I could keep going. And I think I’d prefer to, at least instead of looking at the rest of Wahlberg’s IMDb. —Gruttadaro
Honorable Mention: Oh No, It’s the Cowboy From Mulholland Drive Again
I get it! We did bad! We left off Peter Stormare in Constantine, or Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers, or Dave Bautista in Blade Runner 2049, or literally anyone else from Oppenheimer! We get it! Please let us make it right! This is the girl:
1. Viola Davis, Doubt
Total screen time: 10:23
OK, we’re pushing our (completely arbitrary) rules a little with this one, but you watch this scene and tell us not to:
It lasts seven minutes and 41 seconds. Davis shows more range in it than most actors can in two hours. She outacts Meryl freakin’ Streep of all people. There’s no way we’re leaving it off this ranking just because it ran a few seconds over our time limit. —Sayles
