🎧 Top Star Turns of 2024
I talk with Richard Rushfield about the most memorable performances, from Chalamet to Zendaya
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It’s not the best time to be an actor, as you may have read. And yet, actors are about to be dazzlingly spotlit, starting with the Golden Globes on Jan. 5 and continuing through a gauntlet of awards shows culminating with the Oscars on March 2. For everyone struggling to make it, there remains inspiration in seeing images of those who actually did — the magic of the possible.
But as any awards-season obsessive knows, the Globes, SAGs and Oscars never reward everything that’s worthy. So on today’s special bonus episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, Richard Rushfield and I guide you through the performances of the year that really mattered. (Earlier we did the same with our top films of the year.)
Richard and I name 10 standout performances apiece, ranging from bona fide Oscar contenders — we’re as blown away by Mikey Madison in Anora as everyone else — to the stars of Sundance movies that still don’t have distribution. Along the way, we talk about the state of stardom in Hollywood: the young bright lights like Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet to Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who followed up her 1997 Oscar nom for Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies with decades of steady, unflashy work on TV shows only to storm back into the race almost 30 years later with Leigh’s latest, Hard Truths. She offers hope to the legions of other working actors who dream of their chance at the podium.
Subscribe to the Prestige Junkie podcast to listen to the episode, or watch the video version on Spotify. I’ll be back Monday with my take on the Golden Globes, and I’ll have a lot of special bonus content coming all week — let the awards-season madness commence!
