The 10 Breakout Performances of 2020

Let’s not even try to work out which performances of the year were the “best” right now. With the sheer amount of great movies hitting screens in 2020, there was at least an equal number of stellar acting jobs that helped make those movies more than words and pictures. There were obvious stars of the year—like Anya Taylor-Joy, who dominated the big screen in Emma. and the small screen in The Queen’s Gambit—and the awards perennials that either won’t go away or keep turning in performances that prove their staying power. But a few performers either blindsided us with a new facet of themselves or caught us totally off-guard with massive career-topping cannonballs. These breakout performances stood out not only from their movies, but from their careers in general and from this year at large. They were emotional centers of silly movies, expert turns that came when phoning it in was expected—they were the people you couldn’t stop talking about once the credits started rolling. They might not be the biggest or loudest performances of the year (though, one or two might be in consideration for the title), but these actors deserve some additional love for their work in 2020. And yes, we cheat a little here.
Here are the 10 breakout performances of 2020:
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Maria Bakalova
Since Borat Subsequent Moviefilm dropped on Amazon Prime, Rudy Giuliani has unsurprisingly remained the movie’s most noteworthy conversational export. News headlines about Giuliani and his most unusual way of removing a mic were the topic of the day at whatever the pandemic-era equivalent of the watercooler is. But it’s to the credit of the mockumentary’s other buzzed-about element and secret weapon, Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, that its shocking climax is as effective as it is in targeting Donald Trump’s private attorney.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm may have broken Bakalova into the mainstream with her multidimensional portrayal of the oddball Tutar. Borat mines satire from the extremes of Tutar as the titular weirdo’s caged, haggard and unibrowed daughter before she sheds baggy clothes for the camera-ready makeup and blonde hair of a Tomi Lahren lookalike. And if you thought Tutar’s exaggerated high shrill was Bakalova’s natural voice, her performance in Transgression (her first lead role) puts into sharp relief how much it’s a part of the Borat act. The gung-ho hilarity and up-for-anything attitude Bakalova brings to the Borat sequel makes for the closest thing to a can’t-miss-it performance that 2020 has provided. It’s one thing that Bakalova holds her own against Sacha Baron Cohen and his seasoned on-camera bravura. It’s another thing altogether to supplant him as the breakout of the sequel, shepherding the soul of a movie—that nobody expected to be as perversely touching as it is—while keeping in hilarious lockstep with the scuzzy legacy that the Borat name implies. —David Lynch
Freaky: Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton
There are body-swap performances and there are performances that make you forget the bodies were swapped in the first place. Freaky‘s central silly premise is that it’s Freaky Friday AND Friday the 13th, right? Cool, fun—a good gag based on a clever title pairing. But what if big burly serial killer Vince Vaughn and ditzy dork Kathryn Newton somehow pull off some of the year’s best performances (of course, they must be inseparable for the premise to work—each is doing both characters, after all) with hardly an actorly affectation between them?
Vaughn, who is on a run of interesting performances, really leaps out here: He’s a teen girl without feeling like a caricature or an easy laugh machine. His physicality shifts, his cadence gets a lilt but not an insulting SNL-style accent. His walk and run both alter in different, yet utterly transformative ways. On the other side, Newton channels her inner dead-eyed slasher with a grounded twist. She’s not quippy nor force of nature-esque, but an outsider weirdo that has enough (evil) humanity to manipulate, react and perform. That she struts her stuff as a serial killer pretending to be a high schooler—that said serial killer just gave a cherry bomb makeover—is so layered that it’s hard to write about. That she pulls it off so well that the writing doesn’t need to expressly say anything is almost as impressive as the serial killer’s makeup skills. The best showcase of these swapped portrayals comes during Freaky’s most intimate scene, in which Vaughn (playing the teen girl) is in the back seat of a car with her crush. The touching, downright romantic scene between Vaughn and the young guy is startlingly well-done simply because, on its face, its premise seems like bait for a cheap laugh. But, like the rest of Freaky, it’s far more than meets the eye thanks to its leads.
Minari: Yuh-Jung Youn
Minari works because of Yuh-Jung Youn. You know that performance that Hillbilly Elegy thought Glenn Close was going to have? Yuh-Jung Youn does that about ten-fold, owning the film with an effort that’s actually Oscar-worthy and not Oscar-baiting. The South Korean veteran’s sharp yet caring grandmother, who moves into her daughter’s Arkansas home alongside her family, is every bit as deep and detailed as the overall life that Minari paints. Her jabbing dialogue and whipcrack punchlines sting, but in that backhandedly loving way that only relatives and dear friends can get away with. That’s because her wide-ranging performance is part slapstick, part symbol, and part plot point—all of which are handled with elegance and engaging energy. Few actors could chug piss (it was a prank, ok?), then convincingly turn it into an endearing lesson between grandmother and grandson. Rapport with her castmates, particularly that grandson (Alan S. Kim), makes the hefty emotional beats stick—but more importantly it allows the nuances filling out the character’s corners to feel real. She loves watching wrestling, but hates to see them risk injury. Yuh-Jung Youn’s playful eyes and poised movements in these moments create a character far better than her foul-mouthed card playing…though her winning performance makes us feel lucky we get both.
*The ordering of Yuh-Jung Youn’s name has been changed at the request of A24 and her representatives.