The article ranks six film performances since 2010 by their technical difficulty, emotional impact and cultural staying power. In the supplied extract, it highlights actors whose performances make characters feel fully realised rather than simply written.

– Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in *Poor Things*, praised for charting Bella’s rapid intellectual and physical development; Stone won Best Actress.
– Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in *The Favourite*, noted for balancing comic eccentricity with grief, pain and insecurity; Colman won Best Actress.
– Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler in *Manchester by the Sea*, introduced as a withdrawn janitor forced back to his traumatic hometown.