AFT Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role

This is the first category of the 12th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them and drawn from a pool of approximately 200 films. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Nick Offerman (Hearts Beat Loud), Sunny Siljic (Mid90s)

Runners-up:
Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting)
Robert Redford (The Old Man and the Gun)
Jeffrey Wright (O.G.)
Ben Foster (Leave No Trace)
Martin Freeman (Cargo)

The winner:
Evan Peters (American Animals) created a character whose energy was infectious and completely dominated by a wild and active imagination, all the more impressive because the real-life person he played also appeared in the film.

Other nominees:
Steve Buscemi (The Death of Stalin) used his signature affect to perfectly convey an eager heir to the throne, who didn’t miss any opportunity for comedy in his many machinations (bonus points for wearing pajamas under his suit). Viggo Mortensen (Green Book) leaned into the less sophisticated aspects of his unenlightened heavyweight, crafting an endearing and hilarious figure who felt believable. Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) didn’t need fake teeth to feel like Freddie Mercury, conveying his outlook on the world and his passion for creating cutting-edge music. Ansel Elgort (Jonathan) turned in an incredible double performance as two brothers who never actually saw each other, emoting on camera and reacting to watching that same video as if he really were two separate people.