6 of the Best Breakout Performances of All Time

Paul Giamatti - John Adams

It’s something of a fallacy to label a performance as ‘breakout’ when it comes almost three decades into an actor’s career, but such is the power and magnitude of Paul Giamatti’s performance in John Adams that it re-focused his entire career, raising him to a level he had only ever displayed glimpses of previously. Sure, his CV boasted roles like Kenny in Private Parts (“WNNNNNBC”), Bob Zmuda in Man on the Moon (“Don’t believe everything you hear, George”) and the irascible Miles in Sideways (“I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot”), working with directors like Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, Ron Howard and M. Night Shyamalan, but the remarkable range Giamatti was capable of had been kept somewhat under wraps in what were, Sideways notwithstanding, mostly bit parts and supporting roles. 

Here he plays the titular John Adams – founding father and second President of the United States of America – across seven perfect episodes of the sprawling HBO miniseries. It’s as much a biopic of the country as it is Adams, covering as it does the desperate struggle for independence from the British – in which Adams played a fundamental role – and the first fifty years of the burgeoning United States. Based on David McCullough’s sublime, sweeping biography, Giamatti perfectly presents the essence of a man that, having had as much of a hand in forging the nation as fellow founding fathers George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, hasn’t seen his name and deeds deified in quite the same way. He’s crochety, restless, pugnacious, stubborn, driven, petty, erudite but, above all, truly brilliant. It’s no mean feat to faithfully portray a man so complicated undertaking a task so serious during a time so fraught with danger, but Giamatti is faultless, creating a character as genuine and believable in his thirties as he is in his eighties. For me (and with apologies to James Gandolfini), there’s never been a better performance in the history of the small screen. Ashley Carter (Editor)

Matt Damon - Good Will Hunting

What should you do when you’re struggling to find a breakout role? Co-write and star in a movie that goes on to win two Oscars, obviously. For all the high-profile roles Matt Damon has gone on to bag during his illustrious career - and he has done a lot of incredible stuff, from The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999 to The Last Duel in 2021 - he may never top his performance as the titular Will in Good Will Hunting. 

Putting in a layered display that combines effortless charm and likeability with real steel and edge, cockiness and arrogance with vulnerability and self-doubt, Damon was well worthy of his Academy Award nod for Best Actor back in the late nineties. Good Will Hunting? More like Bloody Phenomenal Will Hunting, am I right? George White (Assistant Editor)

Toshiro Mifune - Drunken Angel

Toshiro Mifune was an actor of tremendous range, able to portray both the captivatingly deranged (Rashomon, Throne of Blood) and the effortlessly cool (Stray Dog, Yojimbo) like no one else ever could. Six years before Mifune performed the iconic “This baby is me!” scene in Seven Samurai, director Akira Kurosawa would first harness his singularly intense acting skills in their 1948 crime film Drunken Angel, which follows the friendship between a gangster with tuberculosis (Mifune) and the alcoholic doctor who treats him (Takeshi Shimura).

Kurosawa famously described Mifune's talent by saying: "The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express". In the speechless, climactic brawl of Drunken Angel, the then-28-year-old star delivers the scene's emotional impact through sheer physicality, scuffling around the room with a piercing stare as he hacks up blood. From then on, he and Kurosawa would collaborate on a further fifteen feature films – and when the two icons parted ways after Red Beard in 1965, it can be argued that the golden age of Japanese cinema came to an end there and then. Jamie Morris (Screen Editor)

Victoria Pedretti - The Haunting of Hill House

As I’ve discussed in these lists before, I’m not really one for horror. However, the one exception to this rule is that I will watch anything that Victoria Pedretti is in, from The Haunting of Bly Manor all the way to the Netflix original show You. First appearing in Mike Flanagan’s 2018 The Haunting of Hill House, loosely based on the Shirley Jackson novel, Pedretti has since been recognised as a modern day scream queen for her portrayal of disturbed young women. And this is certainly true of her performance as Nell Craine in Hill House, as the actress embodies a young woman driven mad by the hauntings of her childhood home. Scary, saddening, and unsettling, Pedretti couldn’t have played her any better. Lizzy O'Riordan (Editorial Assistant)

Chris Hemsworth - Thor

Thor was Chris Hemsworth's breakout role in the 2011 film of the same name, which was the fourth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU is the highest-grossing film franchise in history, and it’s hard to claim that Hemsworth hasn’t played a huge part in this. It is not only his massive physique that makes him the perfect actor to play Thor, but also his ability to portray the character’s journey from conceited and self-centred to earnest and sincere. His role has recently been reprised in Thor: Love And Thunder, making Hemsworth the only MCU actor whose hero has had a solo film in all four Phases of the MCU. Since he has recently been named as one of the world’s highest paid actors, it is impossible to argue that his breakout performance in the role was not one of the best of all time. Gemma Cockrell 

Jamie Lee Curtis - Halloween

Imagine heading to the cinema in 1978. As you stare up at the big screen, Halloween’s piercing film score fills your ears while a lone, carved pumpkin flickers on a black screen and the words “Introducing Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie” glow bright orange.  Director John Carpenter knew that - despite playing just a normal, geeky high school girl in a slasher movie - Curtis would go on to do great things, and her performance deserved a proper introduction to movie-goers. Curtis featured in several horror films after Halloween but, somehow, defied the odds and avoided being typecast. Instead, she continued to branch out and, over the past forty yearsm has become one of Hollywood’s most iconic, well-known faces. Her strong, often comical, performances meant she went on to capture our hearts in other cult classics such as Trading Places, My Girl, Freaky Friday and Knives Out. Fantastically, her legacy as a slasher girl has remained and the 63-year-old has recently reprised the role of Laurie for Halloween Kills, with Halloween Ends hitting screens soon, too. Hollie Anderson