Even in the face of box office woes, an industry-changing acquisition, and unpredictable flops and hits, 2025 was another banner year for cinema with electric performances that reach for greatness and, more often than not, achieve something truly spectacular. The inaugural Screen Awards, in collaboration with Collider, ScreenRant, CBR, and MovieWeb, aims to recognize these stunning achievements, voted on by a panel of critics and editors from across each site.
Awards season may begin in earnest with the Venice-Telluride-Toronto rush, but some of our contenders made a splash all the way back at the beginning of the year. It's a testament to a film's power, and the performances therein, when it can survive the summer blockbuster rush and deluge of fall festivals to stay in the conversation like some of our Best Actor nominees have. However, there's always a late, breaking spoiler (one of which is included here).
This year's Best Actor contenders represent a true range of what Hollywood has to offer, from quietly nuanced performances dripping with grief and hope to manic and paranoid tour de forces that encompass both present and future generations of Movie Stardom. As ScreenRant's Deputy News Editor, I'm honored to present the performances that captured our attention and kept us talking through the entire year. You can check out our full Screen Awards coverage, but below, see the nominees for Best Actor.
Jesse Plemons (Bugonia)
The first of two Friday Night Lights alums in our Best Actor category, Jesse Plemons proved what many of us already knew with Yorgos Lanthimos's latest feature: that he's one of the greatest actors currently working. A paranoid conspiracy thriller that hearkens back to Lanthimos's earlier, idiosyncratic work, Bugonia is a re-wired version of South Korea's Save the Green Planet! Plemons stars as Teddy Gatz, a beekeeper and factory worker by day and conspiracy theorist by night, who kidnaps CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone, in a deliciously deceptive performance filled with corporate-speak and antihistamine cream) because he believes she is an alien.
Behind Teddy's conspiracy-theorizing lies a deep sadness and Plemons takes great care to portray this balance of paranoia, grief, and hope that he might be right about Michelle after all. This underlying desperation is in spite of all that Teddy has faced, including health problems afflicting his mother (Alicia Silverstone) caused by the same company overseen by Stone's character. It isn't until Bugonia's third act that Plemons lets all of these emotions brilliantly explode to the surface as paranoia makes way for violence and mayhem.
Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams)
Train Dreams feels like the little movie that could (and quite possibly will) go the distance. Debuting in January at 2025's edition of Sundance, the Clint Bentley-directed adaptation is based on Denis Johnson's novella of the same name. Edgerton stars as Robert Granier, a logger in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century. Some would say Robert's life is unremarkable — hell, he might even say that himself — but that's the whole point.
Remarkable things happen all around Robert — heart-wrenching, world-changing, life-threatening things. But, the whole way through, Edgerton anchors us in Robert's perspective with a grounded, earthy performance that contains all of life's joy and sorrow in fleeting glances of farewell or in the grind of a saw against a tree trunk. Some may say that grief defines Edgerton's Train Dreams performance, but the film's quietly affecting ending hammers home that grief is just one part of an intricate pattern, like the roots of a centuries-old pine that spread throughout the earth.
Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)
The cast and crew of One Battle After Another are already collecting trophies left and right in precursor awards, a testament to Paul Thomas Anderson's monumental achievement. Though it's arguably an ensemble piece, there's no denying that DiCaprio's Bob Ferguson is the beating heart of One Battle After Another, his stoner Girl Dad both a source of humor and deep angst. Bob, or, as he was formerly known, Ghetto Pat, starts the film as a revolutionary caught up in the high that comes from radical acts of protest and his love affair with Teyana Taylor's Perfidia Beverly Hills.
That kinetic energy gives way to stagnancy as Bob raises a teenage girl, the French 75's ideals diluted by pot smoke and fatherly duties. When he's forced to spring back into action, DiCaprio does some of his best comedic work yet while retaining an air of heartbreak that stems from his inability to protect Willa from the evils of the world he helped create. It's a fine balancing act that DiCaprio makes look absolutely effortless, taking selfies with Benicio del Toro's Sensei Sergio one minute before lamenting the fact that he can't do his daughter's hair the next.
Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)
Ryan Coogler's horror sensation dominated the first half of 2025, the second in a string of major wins for Warner Bros. in a record-breaking year for the studio (acquisition aside). But the records hardly define Sinners, a soulful and unsettling vampire epic set against the backdrop of rural Mississippi. Michael B. Jordan pulls double duty in the film as twins Smoke and Stack in a dual performance the likes of which we haven't seen since Lindsay Lohan became two in The Parent Trap.
Jordan imbues each twin with a distinct disposition down to every subtle mannerism and tic. The brothers may be back in town to open a juke joint, but they have a lot of explaining to do to those they left behind. Watching Smoke and Stack work their way back into the lives of former lovers, friends, and family, it's easy to see how they were able to finesse money from Chicago crime bosses before going on the lam. Going back to Fruitvale Station, it's clear that Jordan has always had this type of performance in him and Sinners allows the actor to show his full range in a way he has never before.
Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme)
Earlier this year at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Timothée Chalamet divisively declared he is "in the pursuit of greatness," a thread that has continued as he promotes his upcoming collaboration with Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme. More recently, in a since-taken-down interview earlier this week, Chalamet called his performance in the film "top-level sh*t" and the best he's given yet. His confidence has rubbed some people the wrong way, but he hasn't uttered one lie.
As Marty Mauser, Chalamet is in a mode we haven't seen from him before. He's manic and destructive, a ball of energy that doesn't stop moving whenever he's onscreen (which is for most of the film's two-and-a-half hour runtime). Marty Mauser is so bursting with passion that he can't tame himself, nor is he willing to take blame for the consequences of his actions, but Chalamet still manages to make the motor-mouthed New Yorker lovable. All this leads to a devastating moment of catharsis that caps off a revelatory turn, one that pushes Chalamet ever closer toward that greatness he's striving for.