Year in review: The busiest actors of 2021

The epitome of a working actor, Isaacs turned up in seven movies this year, and if you’ve ever read an interview with him you know he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’ll always be Lucius Malfoy to Millennials, but this year could bring him a different kind of recognition in a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his shattering work in Fran Kranz’s school-shooting drama “Mass”. This would be his first Oscar nod and a well-deserved one at that.

A three-movie year is child’s play for the hard-working Cage, but he poured every bit of his soul into the role of a man desperately searching for his kidnapped, truffle-hunting best friend in “Pig”. Yes, the best friend is a pig, and, no, it’s not played for laughs. Cage underplays for the first time in ages, and the film, despite its odd premise, does not devolve into weirdness for weirdness’ sake. The same cannot be said for “Willy’s Wonderland” (where Cage takes on murderous Chuck E. Cheese-like characters) or “Prisoners of the Ghostland” (a typically outrageous Sion Sono film), but, as ever, Cage appears to be having fun.

We say it every year, but Eric Roberts is literally the man who makes a movie on the way home from making a movie. This year, the madly prolific Roberts knocked out a whopping twenty-one films, including a “Home Alone” rip-off with dogs as Macauley Culkin and two pictures with “Elevator” in the title. He stars in the promisingly titled “Ape vs. Monster”, in which a giant, extraterrestrial ape crashlands on Earth and accidentally makes a scorpion get really big, so, naturally, he has to fight it. That’s the actual plot. If you expect anything more from a movie, go make one yourself. Chances are, Eric Roberts will be in it.

After “Argo” won Best Picture, it seemed like we might lose Affleck the Actor to the more prestigious career of Affleck the Director. But the acting itch never really goes away (see: Eastwood, Clint), and thank god because Affleck has never been better in front of the camera than he is in Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel” and George Clooney’s “The Tender Bar”. He also reminded us that he was an awfully good Bruce Wayne/Batman in the bizarre “ Zack Snyder’s Justice League”. We’ll get to see him steam up the screen with Ana de Armas in Adrian Lyne’s first film in twenty years when “Deep Water” escapes Disney’s puritan clutches.

We can’t get enough of “Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer, and, fortunately, the Emmy-winning actor is getting more than enough work. Comer fielded the trickiest role in Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel”, peeling back an onion of righteous scorn as we wade through self-serving perspectives to get to the truth of a sexual assault. She got to cut loose and have a little fun in the loopy “Free Guy” while starring in “Help”, a decidedly un-fun British television drama about the COVID pandemic.

Zendaya got 2021 rolling with the two-hour “Euphoria” special before turning in a smoldering performance opposite John David Washington in the romantic drama “Malcolm & Marie”. Over the summer, she provided the voice of Lola Bunny in LeBron James’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy”, then gave us a taste of Chani in Denis Villeneuve's “Dune: Part One”, who’ll play a much larger part in the events of Part Two. Finally, she returned to the MCU fold as MJ to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. The twenty-five-year-old is just scratching the surface of her talents.

The boyish Brit would’ve appeared in five big-budget flicks this year had Sony’s long-delayed adaptation of the “Uncharted” video games not gotten bumped off the studio’s 2021 release schedule. Holland did, however, star in Sony’s long-delayed adaptation of the first book in the “Chaos Walking” sci-fi series. He also teamed up with the Russos for a non-MCU action-drama called “Cherry”, which streamed on Apple+ to very little acclaim. Viewers got a glimpse of Holland in the mid-credit sequence of “Venom: There Will Be Carnage”, and turned out in droves to see his third standalone adventure as Spider-Man. Get used to him. He’s an appealing lad.

Isaac’s one of our most magnetic movie stars, and he seems blissfully disinterested in exploiting his appeal in crassly commercial movies. This year, he gave a beautifully nuanced performance in Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter”, while committing to a deeply flawed husband alongside Jessica Chastain’s miserable wife in Hagai Levi’s deeply depressing remake of Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage”. He cut a dashing figure as Duke Leto Atreides in “Dune”, and gave a dashing voice to Gomez Addams in the animated “The Addams Family 2”. 

There isn’t a more in-demand actor working today than Adam Driver, and when you watch him throw off sparks with Lady Gaga in “House of Gucci”, you get why producers and moviegoers keep clamoring for more. The hunky breakout star of HBO’s “Girls” was perfectly cast as an unsympathetic scoundrel in “The Last Duel”, and participated in one of the year’s most discussed scenes in Leos Carax’s “Annette” (which you can read about in our “Most Memorable Movie Scenes of 2021” list)! This is the right kind of busy. 

Two years ago, actor-comedian Awkwafina was downright inescapable. After a quiet 2020, she roared back into the mainstream with four splashy performances this year, including the co-lead in the MCU mega-hit “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”. As the voice of Sisu in “Raya and the Last Dragon”, she staked a claim to a Disney character whose cinematic/streaming journey should keep her busy for a solid decade. She also appeared in an action-comedy called “Breaking News in Yuba County”, and is earning raves for her work opposite Mahershala Ali in “Swan Song”.

Call him our generation’s Sherlock Holmes or Stephen Strange, just don’t call him lazy. Mr. Cumberbatch racked up five credits if you count his voice work as the Sorcerer Supreme in “What If…?”, and we’re especially impressed that he could carve out the psychic space to sink deep into the cruel world of Phil Burbank in Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”. He’s also worth checking out in the underseen Guantanamo Bay legal drama, “The Mauriturian”.

When he’s not shilling for Peloton, Ryan Reynolds does a little acting. This year, the “Deadpool” star reprised his role as one of the title characters in “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard”. He scored a surprise summer hit with the video game spoof “Free Guy”, and starred alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Gal Gadot in “Red Notice”, a $200 million hated by critics, but, according to Netflix, viewed by more people than actually exist on the planet. Reynolds is a major draw, and quite likable in the right role. But did you actually watch “Red Notice”?

What did we do to deserve a surfeit of Salma in the middle of a global pandemic? If only the films were up to her brilliance. The sporadically entertaining “House of Gucci” was the best of the bunch, though she gets short shrift in the promisingly hammy role of a psychic. She played the Wife (we think) in “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” and joined in the MCU fun as Ajak in Chloe Zhao’s “Eternals”. Hayek also appeared opposite Owen Wilson in “Bliss”, yet another sci-fi dud from writer-director Mike Cahill. Busy is good, but we’ll take quality over quantity, Ms. Hayek!

The gorgeous and immensely talented Seydoux brought some much-needed heart to the final chapter of Daniel Craig’s Bond tenure in “No Time to Die” while collaborating with three of the finest filmmakers on the planet in Bruno Dumont’s “France”, Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” and Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”. She also starred in Ildikó Enyedi’s widely panned “Story of My Wife”, which brings her up to five credits for 2021.

A restless, unpredictable performer, Tilda Swinton kept us guessing in 2021 with three very different performances in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”, Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria”. As with pretty much everyone on this list, Swinton found time to contribute to the MCU (if only as the voice of the Ancient One on the animated “What If…?”). Swinton is always searching and never, ever boring.

Welcome to the franchise racket, kid. Chalamet struck the right balance between youthful arrogance and dread in Dennis Villeneuve's “Dune: Part One”, which, if nothing else, cemented his status as a Zoomer heartthrob. There’s more to Timmy, however, and we got to see glimpses of it in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”, where he plays an intellectual revolutionary. He also had the profound misfortune of appearing in Adam McKay’s lousy “Don’t Look Up”.

Blanchett has been busier, but after going a full year without her in any onscreen capacity, her three performances this year feel like manna. The main course is her lusciously dark femme fatale turn in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”; this is a woman who’s studied the best to ever do it (Stanwyck, Greer, Stone), and sets out to join the pantheon. Blanchett’s other performances this year weren’t quite as stunning, but we’ll take her however we can get her.

Dafoe reunited with two of his longtime collaborators, Paul Schrader and Wes Anderson, this year, which would’ve been an ample serving of Dafoe. But he also found time to etch out a deep groove in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”, and *spoiler* reprise his iconic role as the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. Whether it's heroism or villainy or somewhere in between, there’s no one who does it better or more bizarrely than Dafoe.

This twenty-five-year-old actor got off to an auspicious big-screen start ten years ago in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”, and he’s finally rounding into form. He couldn’t quite get past the awkward execution of Neil Burger’s sci-fi thinker “Voyagers”, but he’s superb as the vengeful son of an Iraq War veteran in “The Card Counter” and maybe even better as a father-figure-searching kid in “The Tender Bar”. Sheridan isn’t the blank slate he appeared to be over the last few years. There’s a soulfulness here, and it’s significant that major directors like Spielberg, Schrader, and Clooney are lining up to work with him.

Thirty-two is as good an age as any to become a superstar. Simu Liu has been flying under the radar doing sensational work on “Blood and Water” and “Kim’s Convenience”, but with the blockbuster success of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” the secret is out. Funny, physical and handsome as hell, Liu’s going to be one of the most sought-after leads for a long time to come. We might’ve missed him in “Women Is Losers” and “Bright: Samurai Soul” this year, but we’ll get around to it.

How do you like your Harbour: big and Russian or meek and cuckolded? Or do you simply like his voice, because he did plenty of animated work this year with “Big City Greens”, “Q-Force” and “Star Wars: Visions”. Harbour uses his thickness to make Red Guardian menacing in “Black Widow”, but turns this imposing girth into a pathetic, lumbering loser in Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move”. Harbour’s long been a valuable character actor, but after the plaudits of “Stranger Things”, he’s going to be turning down more work than he accepts.

Pro wrestlers are no strangers to grueling schedules, so it’s no surprise that they take to work that doesn’t require them to be flung out of a ring onto a thin mat sprawled out over unforgiving concrete. So Cena had a comparatively easy year letting his stuntman take the brunt of his bumps in “F9” and “The Suicıde Squad”. He’s also hilariously charming in both movies, particularly the latter where his misplaced patriotism and machismo leads him to betray his cohorts. Cena was also enjoyably off his rocker in “Vacation Friends”, which, if nothing else, makes a case for more pairings with Lil Rel Howery.

John Cena’s “Vacation Friends” castmate had himself a helluva 2021: eight feature credits, including substantive turns in “Judas and the Black Messiah”, “Fatherhood” and “National Champions”. We’re never going to be able to unsee Howery cuffed to Eric André at a very vulnerable extension of the male body, but great actors take big risks, and there’s nothing riskier than that. Howery is due to appear in Adrian Lyne’s Ben Affleck-Ana De Armas erotic thriller “Deep Water” next year, which, if nothing else, will place him in excellent company with Stuart Pankin.

Typically, making seven movies in one calendar year would constitute “busy”, but exactly how hard is Bruce Willis - one of our very favorite movie stars and a phenomenal actor - working on DTV slop like “Survive the Game”, “Out of Death” and “Cosmic Sin”? Willis’s last real performances arrived in 2019 via M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass” and Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn”. In these films, he’s at least physically spry. He also still has that mischievous glint in his eye. But these movies are so far beneath him. We’d gladly take one real film a year where he gives us the goods, rather than seven terrible films where he skates on his name for an easy payday.

Jackson apparently gets ornery when the work dries up, which it didn’t last year even with the pandemic. “Spiral: From the Book of Saw”, “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” and “The Protégé” weren’t the most challenging projects, but they gave the veteran actor plenty of room to remind us why we love him. He also got to return to the Nick Fury well via “What If…?” We’ll get to see Jackson reunite with his “Kingsman” director Matthew Vaughn for Argylle next year. There’s no such thing as too much Samuel L. Jackson.