Trending badgeTrendingPosted 1 hour ago10 Actors I Think About Every Awards Season Because They've Basically Defined ItThey really set the benchmark for acting.by Arsheen Kaur SahniBuzzFeed StaffFacebookPinterestLink Every awards season, I find myself falling into the same loop. I watch the nominations roll in, skim the predictions, and realize that there are certain actors whose names feel almost automatic at this point. Not because of hype or campaigns, but because their work has trained us to expect excellence. These are the performers who turn up in a film and instantly shift the awards conversation, the ones where a "snub" feels like a glitch and a win feels like a formality. This list is about those performers. The ones who've clearly reached a point where awards season doesn't feel random anymore-just inevitable. 1. Cate Blanchett WWD / WWD via Getty Images / Via gettyimages.in From playing Elizabeth I to fully committing to a superhero villain like Hela, Cate Blanchett has built one of the most respected filmographies of her generation, stacking up performances that people still argue about years later. I've always felt her career is the aspirational blueprint for actors who want real longevity and range. Even early on, it was clear this wasn't a fluke. After smaller projects like Oscar and Lucinda, it was her turn in Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth that made the industry sit up and pay attention, earning her the first of many Oscar nominations.
From there, the momentum never really dipped and her Oscar win for Blue Jasmine sealed her status. I don't think Blanchett is chasing trophies anymore, award bodies have simply learned to follow wherever she goes. 2. Frances McDormand Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / FilmMagic / Via gettyimages.in Over the course of a seriously long career, Frances McDormand has been quietly delivering great performances without ever turning it into a spectacle. I always think back to her earlier work in Blood Simple and Mississippi Burning, the latter of which earned her her first Oscar nomination and set the tone for everything that followed. Since then, she's picked up five more acting nominations and won three Oscars from just six total nods, which is an almost ridiculous win rate. To put that into perspective, Jack Nicholson also has three wins but needed twelve nominations to get there.
When her name is attached to a project, expectations immediately rise (mine and those of hundreds of other people). Fargo, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Nomadland aren't just Oscar-winning performances in my eyes you see, they're films that live and literally breathe through her presence. 3. Daniel Day-Lewis Mondadori Portfolio / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images / Via gettyimages.in There isn't much left to say about Daniel Day-Lewis that hasn't already been said a hundred times, but honestly, why stop now. He's great. We both know it and so does everyone else. Gravity exists. Coffee is necessary. And Daniel Day-Lewis being one of the greatest actors of any generation is just one of those facts people have collectively agreed on.
He's won three Academy Awards for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln, which puts him in a very small club alongside actors like Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, with only Katharine Hepburn sitting above everyone else. I don't know how you top that kind of legacy, but Day-Lewis somehow did by walking away at the height of it-which, honestly, feels like the most Daniel Day-Lewis move possible. 4. Viola Davis Gilbert Flores / Penske Media via Getty Images / Via gettyimages.in Viola Davis is one of those actors who can change the temperature of a scene the second she walks in. And I don't mean with any big, flashy acting, I mean with the weight of it. She won her Oscar for Fences, but even before that, it was clear that award bodies were struggling to keep up with her impact. On TV, How to Get Away with Murder turned her into a cultural force and made history with her Emmy win. She's also the first African-American actor to pull off the Triple Crown of Acting with an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and in 2023 she quietly added a Grammy to the mix, officially joining the very short EGOT list. At this point, if Viola Davis is attached to something, I don't second-guess it. I just assume the performance is going to hit and stick with me long after it's over. 5. Meryl Streep Mike Marsland / Mike Marsland/WireImage / Via gettyimages.in Having Meryl Streep for more than five decades somehow still doesn't feel like enough. With three Oscars and a record-breaking 21 Academy Award nominations, you'd think her career would be free of "snubs," but that's very much not the case, which is wild considering how dominant she's been for so long. She's often described as the greatest living actress, and honestly, it's hard to argue when her résumé spans everything from Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice to The Iron Lady. Award bodies have followed her almost automatica