Actors who have one performance that lays waste to the rest

Ethan Hawke who is a little try-hard bitch of an actor tbh gave the performance of his life and of the year in First, Reformed where all his weaknesses were used as strengths by Paul Schrader.

Paul Dano in Love & Mercy a guy I could never stand in anything else - lets down TWBB specifically (dude has more apologists for that "performance" than I can believe) - is unbelievably on point and disciplined here.

Both not nodded.........wtf.

These guys just co-starred on stage together too in True West........the mind-boggles at that match-up......

I always go to Elisabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas for this kind of question. Like...where the fuck did that searing, devastating performance come from??

I think he's given a lot of good performances and is generally a reliable performer (outside of whatever the fuck he was doing in Okja), but nothing else Jake Gyllenhaal has done approaches the work he did in Nightcrawler, which I might actually give him the win for (unless I'm forgetting some performances). I don't think I'd even nominate him for anything else.

Penelope Cruz in Volver seems like one........ where I just don't see anything else in her filmography that much worth noting.

I'd also say Peter Fonda in Ulee's Gold (1997)

Often I'll argue that performances praised as "subtle" are just another way of saying "doing nothing at all" but subtle in the true sense is exactly what Fonda did here and how his work comprise his characters personality traits and mimic what is happening outside his work too - what he can master, and has to be mastered by - what he can control and cannot.

The guy he reminds me of the most is a guy who maybe is a far better actor and more of a man (lol) but seemed like a pale copy at one time yet ended up getting nodded for 3 Tony's, 4 Emmy's - with a win......... zero Oscars but who gave many good or better performances in film too: Ben Gazzara

Gazzara you could have easily written off - if you see him in 1965's A Rage To Live - which everyone needs to see - it's  straight up 1965 legit porn   - you could say "is this guy sort of great or is this a sub-Brando joke?" but Gazzara wasn't a joke ..............and he loved all Art - poetry, acting, books, film, stage, just like Ethan Hawke does so Gazzara kept kept coming all the time......that's what Hawke is like.

This is how I think of him:

He wrote this abomination and sung it horrifically.......who is he ripping off here exactly ........ Westerberg?  ........Springsteen?  Who does he think he is.......oh he's an artiste ......oh he's a pretender........oh he's nuthin'........and he'll never give up either.

I often say actors are "major" when they are a big player in their craft........Ethan Hawke - 2 Oscar nods for acting and a Tony nod too.......... God Bless Him for trying and carving out a career........is .......as an actor anyway, First Reformed aside...........minor.