19 Actors Who Had The Greatest Single Year Ever, Ranked

Every actor dreams of “that” year the one where everything hits at once.
The scripts are great, the directors are legendary, the box office explodes,
and awards-season voters can’t stop saying your name. That’s the kind of
year we’re looking at here: not a nice little hot streak, but a
once-in-a-career eruption where an actor suddenly seems to be everywhere at once.

Using a mix of box-office results, awards, critical reception, and long-term
cultural impact and drawing on rankings and reporting from outlets like
Ranker, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and more we’ve
pulled together 19 actors who arguably had the greatest single years any
performer has ever had on the big screen.

How We Judged a “Greatest Single Year”

To keep things (relatively) sane, we looked at a few key questions:

• How many major films? A great year usually means more than one big release, often in totally different genres.
• Did awards voters notice? Oscar love or awards buzz isn’t required, but it definitely elevates a year.
• Did audiences show up? Critical darlings are nice, but the truly iconic years often mix prestige with huge box-office success.
• Did it reshape their career? A “greatest year” should feel like a turning point a breakout, a reinvention, or a peak.
• Is it still talked about now? If people are still referencing that year decades later, it’s probably special.

With that in mind, here are 19 actors whose single-year runs feel almost
unfair to everyone else still trying to memorize their lines.

The 19 Greatest Single Years an Actor Has Ever Had

1. Jim Carrey – 1994

If you ever doubt how fast a career can change, look at Jim Carrey’s 1994.
In one calendar year he went from TV goofball to box-office supernova thanks
to a triple hit of:

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – a loud, wild detective comedy that announced his brand of physical insanity to the world.
• The Mask – a cartoon-on-legs performance that turned a mid-budget comic adaptation into a massive global hit.
• Dumb and Dumber – arguably one of the greatest pure comedies of the ’90s, where he and Jeff Daniels weaponized stupidity into art.

All three films were commercial smashes, with The Mask alone
grossing over $350 million worldwide and confirming that Carrey could open
movies all by himself.
That box-office dominance gave him the freedom to pivot into more nuanced
work like The Truman Show later on. It’s hard to imagine a more
explosive comedy year for any actor, ever.

2. Joe Pesci – 1990

Joe Pesci started the ’90s by showing off two very different flavors of chaos.
On one side, he’s terrifying in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, delivering
a supporting performance so intense it earned him an Oscar. On the other, he’s
getting outsmarted by an eight-year-old in Home Alone, one of the
most beloved family comedies of all time.

Add in his work in smaller projects that year and 1990 becomes the moment Pesci
cements himself as both a serious dramatic force and a secretly brilliant physical comedian.

3. Gene Wilder – 1974

Some actors get one all-time classic. Gene Wilder had two in the same year.
In 1974 he teamed with Mel Brooks for Blazing Saddles and
Young Frankenstein, both now permanent residents of the “funniest
movies ever made” conversation.

As if that weren’t enough, he also appeared in The Little Prince,
adding musical whimsy to an already loaded year. Even without a personal Oscar
that season, Wilder’s 1974 is one of the great flexes in comedy history:
two instant classics and a third, ambitious swing in a single calendar year.

4. Scarlett Johansson – 2019

Scarlett Johansson’s 2019 is what happens when an already-established star
hits every quadrant at once. That year she:

• Earned a Best Actress nomination for Marriage Story, a raw, emotionally draining divorce drama.
• Picked up a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Jojo Rabbit, playing a quietly heroic mother in a bizarre WWII satire.
• Closed out a decade of Marvel storytelling in Avengers: Endgame, which shattered box-office records and became one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

That combination two prestige-nominated performances plus a global superhero
juggernaut makes 2019 one of the most versatile single-year showcases any
actor has had in recent memory.

5. Jack Nicholson – 1975

By the mid-’70s, Jack Nicholson was already a star, but 1975 sealed his legend.
He finally won a Best Actor Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
while also appearing in Ken Russell’s rock opera Tommy, Michelangelo
Antonioni’s existential drama The Passenger, and the offbeat comedy
The Fortune.

From commercial awards behemoths to under-seen art films, Nicholson’s 1975 is
a tour of everything 1970s cinema did best and he fits comfortably in each lane.

6. Tom Hanks – 1998

Tom Hanks has had multiple “is this the peak?” years, but 1998 captures his
range in two movies:

• Saving Private Ryan – Steven Spielberg’s searing World War II epic, where Hanks anchors the film with a weary, humane performance.
• You’ve Got Mail – a charming rom-com reunion with Meg Ryan that quietly became a major box-office success.

One film dominates awards season and war-movie discourse, the other becomes
a comfort-watch classic. Put them together and you get a perfect snapshot of
Hanks’s ability to be both America’s favorite leading man and a serious dramatic actor.

7. Tom Hardy – 2015

Tom Hardy’s 2015 is pure chaos energy in the best way. He roared into
Mad Max: Fury Road, taking over an iconic character and somehow
holding his own beside Charlize Theron’s Furiosa in one of the most acclaimed
action films of the century. He then dove into the brutal frontier world of
The Revenant, earning an Oscar nomination for his menacing supporting role,
and pulled double duty as both Kray twins in Legend.

That combination of blockbuster spectacle, awards-worthy prestige, and
“wait, he’s playing both brothers?” technical showmanship makes 2015 the year
Hardy went from cult favorite to capital-M Movie Star.

8. Denzel Washington – 1993

Most actors would be thrilled to have one memorable legal thriller in a decade.
In 1993, Denzel Washington had multiple heavy-hitters. He co-starred in
Philadelphia, playing a lawyer whose relationship with his client
(Tom Hanks) becomes the emotional spine of one of the first major studio
films to tackle HIV/AIDS head-on. He also led The Pelican Brief,
adapting a John Grisham best-seller and earning praise from critics like
Roger Ebert, who compared his grounded charisma to Golden Age icon
Spencer Tracy.

With additional work that year, Washington showed how effortlessly he could
shift from Oscar-nominated drama to mainstream thriller territory without
ever feeling like he was phoning it in.

9. Robert De Niro – 1995

Robert De Niro’s 1995 is a double feature of icy, professional criminal vibes.
He headlined Casino and Heat, two crime epics that now feel
inseparable from his legacy.

Casino reunited him with Martin Scorsese for a neon-soaked Las Vegas saga,
while Heat finally put him opposite Al Pacino on screen in Michael Mann’s
sleek heist thriller. Both films earned strong box office and critical respect,
and critics have argued that together they mark the end of one era of De Niro’s
crime-genre dominance and the beginning of his more comedic and character-actor phase.

10. Keanu Reeves – 1991

Before the era of John Wick and internet sainthood, 1991 quietly planted the
seeds of Keanu Reeves’s mythos. That year he:

• Surfed and robbed banks in Kathryn Bigelow’s cult action classic Point Break.
• Returned as a lovable doofus in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
• Starred opposite River Phoenix in Gus Van Sant’s indie landmark My Own Private Idaho, which critics and fans still view as a career-transforming dramatic turn.

Between the cult following of those movies and the range they show, 1991
is when Keanu stopped being just a teen heartthrob and became a genuinely
interesting, risk-taking actor.

11. Colin Farrell – 2022

2022 was “the year of Colin.” He delivered a heartbreakingly funny, deeply sad
performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, earning an Oscar nomination.
In the very same year he disappeared under prosthetics as the Penguin in
The Batman, helping the film pull in over $770 million globally, and
played a cave diver in the rescue drama Thirteen Lives.

One year, three radically different roles, all taken seriously by critics
that’s a single-year résumé any actor would envy.

12. John C. Reilly – 2002

John C. Reilly’s 2002 is one of the great stealth flexes in modern awards history.
At the Oscars honoring 2002 releases, three of the five Best Picture nominees
Chicago, Gangs of New York, and The Hours featured him in key roles.

He even snagged a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Chicago,
where he sang, danced, and broke hearts with “Mr. Cellophane.” If you were
watching prestige cinema in the early 2000s, you simply couldn’t escape John C. Reilly in the best way.

13. Jamie Foxx – 2004

Jamie Foxx’s 2004 isn’t just a great year it’s a historic one. He was nominated
for two Oscars in the same year: Best Actor for playing Ray Charles in
Ray and Best Supporting Actor for Collateral, opposite Tom Cruise.
He won Best Actor, joining a very short list of performers with dual acting nominations in a single year.

Both films were critical and commercial successes, with Ray and
Collateral pulling in strong worldwide box office and solidifying Foxx
as more than a comedian or impressionist he became a fully-fledged dramatic leading man overnight.

14. Viola Davis – 2016

Viola Davis’s 2016 is a perfect illustration of how an actor can thrive across
wildly different projects. She anchored the DC ensemble Suicide Squad
as the ruthless Amanda Waller in a movie that earned a huge $700M+ worldwide
while also delivering a wrenching, award-winning performance in the film
adaptation of Fences.

She took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Fences,
adding a film award to the Tony she’d already earned for the same role on
Broadway, and still found time to produce and star in the smaller courtroom
drama Custody. It’s a year that captures her as both a prestige powerhouse
and a blockbuster presence.

15. Sidney Poitier – 1967

Sidney Poitier’s 1967 is more than just a career peak it’s a cultural milestone.
That year he starred in In the Heat of the Night,
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, With Love, all major hits that
tackled race, class, and social change in different ways.

He was the top box-office draw in America that year, and scholars and curators
have since described his success as opening new possibilities for Black actors
and audiences in the wake of the Civil Rights Act. Decades later, those films
still define an era of Hollywood and Poitier is at the center of all three.

16. Jessica Chastain – 2011

If 2011 felt like the year Jessica Chastain suddenly appeared in every good movie,
that’s because she basically did. She broke out with an Oscar-nominated turn in
The Help, stole scenes in Terrence Malick’s meditative The Tree of Life,
and delivered a haunting performance in the indie thriller Take Shelter.

And that’s before you even get to the other films she shot that year, including
Coriolanus and Texas Killing Fields. The run was so impressive that
Roger Ebert wondered if any young actress had ever put together such a cluster
of roles in a single year. For Chastain, 2011 wasn’t just busy it was a full-blown arrival.

17. Thomas Mitchell – 1939

Character actor Thomas Mitchell may not be as widely known as some names on this list,
but his 1939 is the stuff of legend. In what’s often called “Hollywood’s greatest year,”
he appeared in Stagecoach, Gone with the Wind,
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Only Angels Have Wings, and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame all Oscar-nominated films.

He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Stagecoach, playing the
alcoholic doctor in a Western that critics say helped elevate the genre from
B-movie filler to serious cinema. When people talk about 1939 as a miraculous
year for movies, they’re often, indirectly, talking about Thomas Mitchell’s workload.

18. Timothée Chalamet – 2024

Timothée Chalamet had already been a critical darling and box-office presence
thanks to projects like Call Me by Your Name, Dune, and
Wonka. But 2024 is the year where everything fully converged. He led
Dune: Part Two, one of the year’s top-grossing blockbusters, while also
earning a second Best Actor nomination for portraying Bob Dylan in
A Complete Unknown.

Two Best Picture–nominated films, one megabudget sci-fi epic, one intimate
music biopic, the same face on all the posters it’s the kind of year that
transforms a rising star into an era-defining one.

19. Natalie Wood – 1961

Natalie Wood had already successfully made the leap from child star to adult actress,
but 1961 is where her mature screen persona crystallized. That year she:

• Earned an Oscar nomination for Splendor in the Grass, a sensitive coming-of-age drama about love, repression, and mental health.
• Played Maria in West Side Story, one of the most enduring, culturally significant movie musicals ever made, which won 10 Oscars and became the second most profitable film of the year.

That combination of prestige and mass appeal, in projects that remain beloved decades later,
makes 1961 a landmark year not just for Wood, but for Hollywood musicals and youth dramas in general.

What It Feels Like to Watch a Perfect Acting Year Unfold

On paper, these years look like clean bullet points: titles, box office, awards,
critical blurbs. In real time, though, living through a “perfect year” for an actor
feels a lot messier, more surprising, and weirdly personal.

Think about Jim Carrey in 1994 or Scarlett Johansson in 2019. You don’t necessarily
realize you’re in the middle of history when the first movie drops. With Carrey,
maybe you saw Ace Ventura on VHS and thought, “This guy is unhinged.” A few
months later he’s green-faced and elastic in The Mask, and by the time
Dumb and Dumber shows up, he’s not just that weird guy from TV he’s the
face of comedy for an entire decade. The experience as a viewer is one of escalation:
each new release feels like proof that you weren’t imagining it. This person really is that good.

There’s also a special kind of joy in seeing range stack up within a single year.
When someone like Viola Davis or Jamie Foxx bounces from superhero spectacle to
harrowing drama in a matter of months, audiences get to recalibrate what they think
that actor can do. You might walk into Suicide Squad expecting fun chaos
and then find yourself wrecked by Fences later that awards season. Or you
catch Jamie Foxx as a jittery cab driver wrapped up in a hitman’s night from hell,
and a few weeks later you’re watching him melt completely into Ray Charles’s body
language and voice. Those whiplash moments become part of the story you tell yourself
about the year in movies.

For younger or emerging actors, a great single year can feel like watching a new
chapter in film history get written in real time. Jessica Chastain in 2011 and
Timothée Chalamet in 2024 are perfect examples: for months, it feels like every
serious movie you see has them tucked somewhere in the cast list. You start hearing
their name in awards chatter, director interviews, and online debates. There’s a
thrill in being “there” while that happens in knowing you caught their breakout
work on the big screen instead of discovering it years later in a streaming rabbit hole.

And then there’s the hindsight experience. If you come to these runs later, watching
them back-to-back is almost like bingeing a prestige TV season. You can line up
Denzel Washington’s 1993, Robert De Niro’s 1995, or Natalie Wood’s 1961 and see
the evolution of their screen personas click into place across a handful of films.
You notice recurring themes the kinds of characters they gravitate toward, the
directors who “get” them and you gain a deeper appreciation for the craft behind
the hype.

What all of these perfect years share, from Thomas Mitchell’s 1939 to Colin Farrell’s 2022,
is that they’re not just good for the actors they’re good for us. They give fans a
year packed with memorable performances, they push the medium forward, and they leave
behind little time capsules of what audiences cared about at that particular moment in history.
Watching one of those runs unfold, whether live or in retrospect, is like catching
lightning in a bottle and then realizing it somehow struck three or four times in the same year.

Final Thoughts

No ranking like this will ever be universally agreed upon cinephiles could argue
for hours about which years we missed or which actors should move up or down. But
whether you’re drawn to Jim Carrey’s unstoppable 1994, Sidney Poitier’s
era-defining 1967, or Timothée Chalamet’s modern mega-year, one thing is clear:
when an actor has that year, it changes their career, reshapes genres,
and gives moviegoers a front-row seat to greatness in real time.

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