Wes Anderson creates remarkably intricate worlds and populates them with just as peculiar people. His characters tend to possess a similar demeanor — they’re deadpan and staccato, capable of dexterously delivering mouthfuls of elaborate verbiage. Yet each performance feels angled at a slightly different degree, one distinct acting turn making all the difference between a charming scoundrel, a depressed artist, a loyal sidekick, an aloof intellectual, or a precocious kid. Bottle Rocket’s Dignan and Asteroid City’s Augie Steenbeck exist in the same implausibly centered, pastel universe, but they’re not the same people.
The best actors to take on a Wes Anderson role, many of whom have appeared again and again throughout the course of the filmmaker’s 11 features, seem comfortable stretching out in this narrow window of temperament. They manage to find their own ideal register of understatement in the cadence of their voice, and mix it with an amount of pretension necessary for characters already preoccupied with the business of performing themselves. They have a facility with the absurd, but they leave space for earnest love, fear, gratitude, and regret to break through their heavy artifice. Whether they’re portraying a protagonist or a villain, these actors see just hard enough, stare just long enough, and deliver just arid enough jokes to blur the lines between reprehensible and relatable.
The following 50 performances represent the best of the Andersonian Cinematic Universe (now who’s pretentious?), including voice performances and narrators but excluding Mordecai the falcon. An actor can appear more than once on this list (and several do; Willem Dafoe shows up three times, and he’s not the most recurrent of the bunch) as long as their characters are sufficiently differentiated (in the end, Jeff Goldblum’s various characters did not make the cut, as he tends to exude similar bursts of quirkiness across Andersonian worlds).
Each Anderson film is represented on the list at least once, though note: This is neither a ranking of Anderson films (No. 1 on that list would be The Royal Tenenbaums, and I won’t explain here) nor a ranking of the characters themselves (or else Lucas Hedges’s real bastard of a Khaki Scout from Moonrise Kingdom would have made the list somewhere). It’s a survey of the finely tuned acting performances that stand on their own.
50. Margot Robbie as Wife and Actress in Asteroid City
Margot Robbie gets all of one scene (plus a still photograph) of screen time in Asteroid City, but it’s the best scene in the film. The movie is about quite a lot of things, but it’s as much about the act of writing, directing, performing, and even responding to a work of fiction. In the frame story, Robbie plays the actress who was set to play the late wife of Jason Schwartzman’s character, Augie, before her scene was cut. Running into her across a backstage alley, Schwartzman (who is actually playing an actor who is playing Augie) and Robbie (who is also playing an actress who is playing the late wife) act out the cut scene with a tender yet aloof rapport of two people who might have shared a moment of artistic intimacy had that scene remained in the film. It didn’t, and their moment goes as easily as it comes. It’s hard to play purposeful distance in a way that makes an impact, but Robbie bridges the gap not only to Schwartzman across the alley but out into the audience for the kind of nakedly sentimental moment that people think is rarer in Anderson’s films than it actually is.
49. Kara Hayward as Suzy Bishop in Moonrise Kingdom
Starting with its title, Moonrise Kingdom (which is the name Sam and Suzy give the tidal inlet where they set up their momentary love nest) is a movie suffused with the melodramatics and deeply held convictions of first love. Suzy is the less well defined of the film’s young sweethearts, but Kara Hayward’s demeanor is appropriately intimidating to her parents and the Khaki Scouts who are pursuing her. In a filmography where stone-faced stares are a much-traded currency, for Hayward’s visage to stand out as the most unflinching is a feat. And yet she’s also so credibly beguiling to young Sam. The film doesn’t work if Hayward can’t do both. She can and does.
48. Willem Dafoe as Rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox
Willem Dafoe has delicious fun voicing Rat, the sinister security guard who menaces Fox and his cohorts. The character is dressed like a beatnik, speaks like he’s from the French Quarter of New Orleans, and moves like a Shark about to square off against the Jets. Dafoe indulges in the mélange, luxuriating in his accent, a slow drawl that implicitly and explicitly threatens Fox and his family. He’s a psychopath who may well enjoy his role as a villain a bit too much.
47. Cate Blanchett as Jane Winslett-Richardson in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Jane ends up being a more interesting character in the context of Cate Blanchett’s filmography than in the context of Wes Anderson’s films. She doesn’t really play roles like this anymore, vulnerable and impulsive. The Cate Blanchett of Carol and Tár is flinty and determined, not the firecracker that Jane is. As a Blanchett fan, it’s exhilarating to watch, and that feeling overshadows the nagging notion that Jane doesn’t end up making a ton of sense as a character beyond as a wedge between Steve and Ned. It’s the only thing keeping the spunky (Cate Blanchett! Spunky!) performance this low on the list.
46. Willem Dafoe as J.G. Jopling in The Grand Budapest Hotel
While plenty of Anderson’s movies opt for flawed rapscallions instead of villains, when he does go for overt bad guys, they present as either bullies (Andrew Wilson in Bottle Rocket, Lucas Hedges in Moonrise Kingdom) or brutes. Jopling is definitely a brute. Dafoe plays the almost entirely nonverbal role as a fearsome physical presence. If Grand Budapest is the most violent of Anderson’s films, much of that is thanks to Jopling, who at various times chops a man’s fingers off and throws a cat to its death from a high window, with additional murders to boot. Dafoe is a sneering menace, almost cartoonishly so, to suit the farce, but never enough to let the audience or the characters in the film laugh off the threat he presents.
45. Amara Karan as Rita in The Darjeeling Limited
It’s tough to beat the charges of cultural tourism when your movie is literally about tourism in another people’s culture. But Darjeeling’s problems as a film shouldn’t count against Amara Karan’s performance. The English actress of Sri Lankan descent made her film debut in the role of Rita, the train attendant who sneaks cigarettes and has a brief affair with Jason Schwartzman’s Jack. The nonchalance with which she carries on with Jack only to end up in blasé tears when he leaves is classic Anderson. Darjeeling doesn’t do right by most of its non-white characters, but in her brief scenes, Karan sketches an intriguing and beguiling woman.
44. Timothée Chalamet as Zeffirelli in The French Dispatch
Timothée Chalamet gets thrown into the deep end, playing a would-be revolutionary who’s more symbol than substance. To his credit, Chalamet plays into the ungainliness of his youthful frame and lands some of this segment’s funniest moments. He mediates a tense face-off between Frances McDormand’s Krementz and Lyna Khoudri’s Juliette by volleying responses to them both, nimbly hopscotching around his character’s divided loyalties to humorous effect.
43. Tilda Swinton as J.K.L. Berensen in The French Dispatch
If you wanted to credit Tilda Swinton’s appearance on this list almost entirely to the resplendent tangerine caftan that Berensen sports during her lecture, it would be hard to say you were wrong. She’s also dryly hilarious, as Berensen peppers her account of Moses Rosenthaler’s (Benicio Del Toro) art career with asides of her own exploits, sexual and otherwise. Swinton’s academic poster, her quasi-lisp, and the almost impish way she relishes in her artistic interpretations are all an uncanny study on the character’s inspiration, Rosamond Bernier, though since this is a Tilda Swinton character, a frank and almost perfunctory sexuality is omnipresent. Next slide!
42. Edward Norton as Rex in Isle of Dogs
Edward Norton has quietly become one of Anderson’s most ideal performers in the last decade of his work. As the voice of Rex, Norton doesn’t have a ton of narrative weight to bear, but as the more eagerly helpful counterbalance to the nihilistic Chief, Norton’s chipper intonations set the right tone.
41. Tom Hanks as Stanley Zak in Asteroid City
Tom Hanks’s first time playing in the Wes Anderson sandbox is an endearing success. He plays father-in-law to Jason Schwartzman’s Augie, a wealthy man who isn’t particularly warm to his late daughter’s surviving husband. It’s no surprise that Hanks is able to find other ways for Stanley’s love for his four grandchildren — and yes, even Augie — to peek through his gruff exterior. He’s also sweetly funny in a scene where Stanley is almost certainly flirting with Scarlett Johansson’s Midge (he knows her former agent, see) before realizing she and Augie are gazing into each other’s windows.
40. Olivia Williams as Rosemary Cross in Rushmore
Miss Cross is a role that gets increasingly challenging for Olivia Williams as the film’s narrative progresses. Initially, she’s a gleaming crush object for Max, a simple task that Williams accomplishes with her innate charisma and beauty. But it’s her mixed feelings for Herman and growing impatience with Max’s nonsense that put the character in a bind. As the film rolls on, Williams plays the idealized Rosemary as worn down and ultimately exhausted at having to parry an inappropriate Max and depressed Herman. Williams manages to maintain Rosemary’s agency while she’s the object of Max and Herman’s immature tug-of-war, which helps keep that story line out of the realm of cliché.
39. Anjelica Huston as Patricia in The Darjeeling Limited
Anjelica Huston’s performance in Darjeeling as the Whitman boys’ quasi-estranged mother amounts to only a couple scenes, but she certainly makes the most of them. Patricia is an elusive woman who loves her sons but doesn’t want to be the woman they need her to be. Recognizing that gulf is a sad thing for her, and Huston holds Anderson’s intense close-ups with an expression both loving and rueful at once.
38. Lyna Khoudri as Juliette in The French Dispatch
Lyna Khoudri, a César-winning Algerian French actress, was a first-time Anderson collaborator on The French Dispatch, playing opposite Chalamet’s Zefirelli as his revolutionary rival and eventual romantic interest. She gets one really excellent showdown scene with Frances McDormand, a spat that masquerades as being about Zefirelli’s affections but is actually about intergenerational territorialism. Khoudri’s eyes size up McDormand in a way few actors would dare to size up a Frances McDormand character and expect to escape with their life. She imbues Juliette with the half-formidable, half-bratty confidence of youth.
37. Tilda Swinton as Social Services in Moonrise Kingdom
If you’re ever looking for a film performance that is 90 percent posture, look no further than Swinton as Social Services, who blows into New Penzance just ahead of a hurricane and upbraids every authority figure in her field of vision for failing to corral Sam and Suzy. Anderson likes his authority figures to be unbending, and Swinton’s line deliveries are loaded with pitiless competence and just a hint of compassion for the wayward children she’s chasing down.
36. Owen Wilson as Francis Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited
The Darjeeling Limited premiered in Venice less than two weeks after news broke that Owen Wilson had survived a suicide attempt. It makes his performance as the visibly wounded Francis (from injuries suffered in what we eventually find out was a suicide attempt) feel like something we should turn away from. But Wilson is in his comfort zone as ever with Anderson, playing Francis’s persnickety dedication to the trip’s itinerary with his typical generosity. Francis’s wan desire for a spiritual element to his reconciliation with his brothers is probably Anderson’s get-out-of-jail-free card for this movie being aware of its own shallowness. Wilson is, as always, Anderson’s ideal vessel, openhearted and phony all at once, impossible to begrudge.
35. Mason Gamble as Dirk in Rushmore
As Dirk, Max’s faithful, taken-for-granted young school friend, Mason Gamble set the template for all of Wes Anderson’s child characters to come. Gamble’s esprit de corps foreshadows Moonrise Kingdom’s Khaki Scouts; his loyalty work ethic would later be found in Grand Budapest’s Zero; and his guilelessness is reflected in Chaz Tenenbaum’s twin sons. He didn’t deserve to have Max go around telling lies about getting hand jobs from Dirk’s mom, that’s for sure.
34. Alec Baldwin as Narrator in The Royal Tenenbaums
Anderson’s movies often make deft use of narration, be it Courtney B. Vance in Isle of Dogs or Anjelica Huston in The French Dispatch. But by far the most effective and memorable was Alec Baldwin narrating the almost literary tales of failure that comprised The Royal Tenenbaums. Baldwin’s husky purr of a voice sets the table for the events of the film, before settling back to pop in every now and then with an omniscient insight or unspoken truth. The F. Scott Fitzgerald inspirations behind Tenenbaums almost demand the film unfold like a novel, making Baldwin’s contributions necessary and appreciated.
33. Anjelica Huston as Eleanor Zissou in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
With a blue streak in her hair and a piercing glare for her estranged husband, Huston plays Eleanor Zissou with utmost coolness. The performance is all attitude and narrowed eyes, which is exactly why you cast Anjelica Huston.
32. Adrien Brody as Julien Cadazio in The French Dispatch
@insynctual Modern Art - explained by Julian Cadazio 🖼️ Adrien Brody in ‘The French Dispatch’ directed by Wes Anderson #cinema #wesanderson #artistsoftiktok
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There’s some common DNA between Julien and Dimitry, Adrien Brody’s Grand Budapest Hotel character, at least when it comes to their entitled attitudes toward art that doesn’t belong to them. Julien is more complicated, though, bouncing between his capitalist and humanist impulses. Brody plays these hairpin temperamental turns for maximum comedic effect in what’s probably the funniest of his Anderson performances.
31. Liev Schreiber as Spots in Isle of Dogs
Liev Schreiber’s Spots doesn’t join the narrative for real until the latter half of Isle of Dogs, but when he does, he makes an impact. It’s amazing that Anderson took this far into his career to cast Schreiber, since the actor’s mellow voice is so suited for Anderson’s even-keeled requirements. Spots is canine loyalty personified, and Schreiber voices the role like a dutiful soldier.
30. Bryan Cranston as Chief in Isle of Dogs
Bryan Cranston’s only performance to date in a Wes Anderson movie presents an interesting case for evaluation. Temperamentally, Cranston’s delivery makes for an odd fit with the Anderson style, more conversational than arch. But when Chief, the ornery stray, gets overruled into helping his pack assist a boy who’s crash-landed on their trash island, Cranston really nails it. He sells Chief’s crumbling resistance and haunted past. There are funnier voice performances in Anderson’s animated film’s, but Cranston deserves credit for doing so much heavy lifting.
29. Bill Murray as Arthur Howitzer Jr. in The French Dispatch
Arthur Howitzer Jr.’s stewardship over the titular French Dispatch publication ties together the four segments of Anderson’s 2021 film as well as provides the movie with its elegiac heart. After performing in six of the director’s films (plus cameos in Darjeeling and Grand Budapest), Bill Murray is perfectly attuned to Anderson’s rhythms. Murray gets the humor and the humanity in Anderson’s fussiness and never fails to bring it out, one hangdog expression at a time. Murray’s brief moments of screen time as Howitzer are dutifully understated but meaningful, as the beloved editor “coddles, coaxes, and ferociously protects” his writers.
28. Adrien Brody as Peter Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited
Brody’s first appearance in an Anderson movie is a big success. Peter is the most outwardly hostile and simultaneously most recognizably earthbound of the film’s three brothers. The actor doesn’t lean on the Andersonian quirk, but he does manage to lock into Owen Wilson’s and Jason Schwartzman’s comedic timing, which is no easy feat given how familiar those two already were with Anderson’s rhythms. Brody also lands the movie’s one moment of urgent drama, bringing up real emotion when the film desperately needs it.
27. Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
Richie Tenenbaum keeps his emotions on lock more so than anyone else in The Royal Tenenbaums, which is really saying something. His troubling feelings for his sister, Margot, are communicated only in disaffectedly matter-of-fact statements, and even his suicide attempt is depicted flatly. It’s a challenge for Luke Wilson to break through with such a character, and he does so by weaponizing his sad little bird face, and honestly, it’s enough.
26. Wallace Wolodarsky as Kylie in Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wallace Wolodarsky has appeared or voiced characters in five of Wes Anderson’s ten films, usually in very small roles. Kylie is an actual major character, the meek opossum who eventually becomes Mr. Fox’s right-hand man. Wolodarsky’s voice has such a wallflower quality to it, apt for Kylie, whose asides are barely acknowledged half the time. But whether he’s second-guessing Foxy or explaining his unusually good credit line, his uncomplicated affect is the perfect foil for the film’s title character.
25. Willem Dafoe as Klaus in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Klaus is Zissou’s emotionally fragile first mate, a role that Dafoe digs into with real exuberance. He’s territorial with Ned for Zissou’s attention. He’s quick to anger yet easily wounded. Dafoe’s tendencies toward rubber-faced emoting are indulged here to great effect.
24. Bruce Willis as Captain Duffy Sharp in Moonrise Kingdom
Bruce Willis earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his tender performance as New Penzance’s police captain. With a pair of sad, narrowed eyes, Willis communicates a ton about Sharp’s sympathies for poor orphaned Sam and the weariness with which he pursues him. Willis doesn’t get too many laugh lines in the movie, but he’s all heart.
23. Anjelica Huston as Etheline Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
Etheline Tenenbaum’s gentle stewardship over her children yielded better results in their genius-tinged childhoods than in their disappointing adulthoods. But Huston plays her almost academic concern for them with sincere, if bemused, care. Even better are her scenes opposite Gene Hackman. Royal is the only one who can throw Etheline off her game, and the way Huston springs to life in those scenes gives the film a rare sense of spontaneity.
22. Frances McDormand as Lucinda Krementz in The French Dispatch
There’s a prickliness in McDormand’s performance as Lucinda Krementz that disguises itself as simple brusqueness. It’s a clever acting choice, especially in a Wes Anderson movie, where brusqueness is what’s expected. Krementz is fascinated by the student protests while also wrestling with her resentment of the students’ youthful naïveté. It’s a performance that’s more layered than it initially seems, both harder and more vulnerable.
21. Tony Revolori as Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel
The role of young lobby boy Zero often requires Revolori — who was all of 17 years old at the time of filming — to simply hang on for dear life opposite Ralph Fiennes’s hurricane of a comedic lead turn. But Revolori takes his moments when he can find them, maintaining Zero’s regimented work ethic with breakthrough frustrations and annoyances (like when Gustave is flirting with his beloved Agatha).
20. Harvey Keitel as Gondo in Isle of Dogs
For all intents and purposes, Harvey Keitel gets one scene to work with as Gondo, the leader of a pack of dogs that are rumored to be cannibals. Keitel begins the scene with an intimidating growl and ends it in rueful melancholy. In between, the audience gets the gift of hearing Keitel say “Fuzzball” and also howl mournfully. It’s by far the best performance in the movie.
19. Owen Wilson as Ned Plimpton in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Some people got on Wilson’s case when The Life Aquatic came out for failing to credibly replicate a Kentucky accent. Setting aside for a moment that geography is but a construct in a Wes Anderson film, it feels churlish to have slighted Wilson for accent work when he’s delivering the film’s funniest performance. As Ned, Zissou’s would-be son, Wilson rides the line between sweet and simple, which suits the film’s narrative just fine since it plays into Zissou’s parental misgivings. When Ned soulfully mistakes the trash-barge horn for the singing of humpback whales, his accent couldn’t be less important.
18. F. Murray Abraham as Older Zero Moustafa in The Grand Budapest Hotel
The main narrative of The Grand Budapest Hotel exists within a nesting doll of frame stories, one of which features F. Murray Abraham as the adult Zero recollecting his history with the hotel to a writer, played by Jude Law. Abraham’s performance far exceeds the function as mere narrator, though. In contrast with the arch, madcap tone of the Gustave story, Abraham plays older Zero with a romantic sadness for a time that’s gone away. Grand Budapest’s thematic ambitions (among them, Anderson’s desire to address the temptations of nostalgia and explore what honor looks like in the face of creeping fascism) were a big part of why it was Anderson’s biggest Oscar success to date, and Abraham’s is one of the most crucial performances in the film when it comes to the story Anderson is trying to tell. It’s hard to imagine anyone better fit than Abraham to play this notion of wistful grandeur.
17. Scarlett Johansson as Midge Campbell and Mercedes Ford in Asteroid City
Johansson previously voiced a show dog in Isle of Dogs, where she lent a flirty, conversational air to her scenes with Bryan Cranston’s irritable stray that sometimes sounded more Linklater than Wes Anderson. She’s definitely more rhythmically Andersonian here as both Midge, the actress, and Mercedes, the actress playing the actress. Johansson doesn’t make any big choices to differentiate these two women, but the distinctions are precise and telling. She plays Midge’s guardedness with clipped phrasing, and her interest in Augie with a sly raised eyebrow after he so boldly took her photo. As Mercedes, she’s icy and formidable, barely moving a muscle and communicating volumes. For a movie that’s enough about acting technique that it takes a moment to poke Stanislavski in the ribs, Johansson shows just how much variety can exist within the much-imitated restraint of a typical Wes Anderson performance.
16. Ben Stiller as Chas Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
For as often as Ben Stiller has collaborated onscreen with Owen Wilson, he’s only ever appeared in one Wes Anderson movie. You can almost see why in his Tenenbaums performance, which occasionally breaks the deadpan tone of his onscreen siblings for more Stiller-ian petulant outbursts. It works, though, particularly as it builds up to Chas and Royal’s touching reconciliation.
15. Meryl Streep as Felicity Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox
There’s nothing particularly Meryl Streep-ian about what Streep is asked to do as Felicity Fox, the patient-to-a-point wife of the title character. But the three-time Oscar winner makes the most out of every line reading, not by going big (a near impossibility in an Anderson movie) but by setting Felicity’s fears and annoyances to a very low simmer. Her delivery of “If what I think is happening is happening … it better not be” is one of the great understated deliveries of Wes Anderson dialogue ever.
14. Edward Norton as Scout Master Randy Ward in Moonrise Kingdom
Norton’s first collaboration with Wes Anderson saw him playing by-the-manual Khaki Scout leader Randy Ward. He quickly proved to be a natural in this world. For all his reputation as an annoyingly committed actor, Norton feels so loose and playful with Anderson. Ward is a straight-arrow scoutmaster, and Norton hits every fastidious line reading with an eager snap. But he’s kind and nurturing inside that fastidiousness, which matches the tone of this, Anderson’s sweetest movie.
13. Bill Murray as Herman Blume in Rushmore
Murray’s performance in Rushmore changed the entire trajectory of his career to that point, serving as the pivot from broad ’90s comedies to wringing grim laughs out of middle-aged lives of quiet desperation. It turned out to be a lot more fun than it sounded. Critics were so enthralled with Murray’s work as Max Fischer’s benefactor turned rival that they nearly got him an Oscar nomination on acclaim alone. Murray’s disillusioned Herman Blume is the exact right foil for Max, exhausted but admiring of Max’s drive. Anderson helped spark Murray’s career renaissance, and in Murray, Anderson found his most enduring muse.
12. Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck and Jones Hall in Asteroid City
After collaborations that have called upon him to play actual children (Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox), adults stuck in adolescent sibling squabbles (Darjeeling), bellboys (Grand Budapest), and Boy Scout leaders (Moonrise Kingdom), Augie and Jones feel like the first adults Schwartzman has played for Wes Anderson. As Asteroid City’s lead, Augie plays the film’s heaviest themes of grief for the past and uncertainty for what’s ahead. Schwartzman does so with a pronounced clench in his delivery. He’s less restricted but more openly searching as Jones, tenderly uncertain as to how to make sense of this strange curiosity of a play. If parts, if not all, of Asteroid City are Anderson defending his meticulous style as his own way to search for meaning in the universe, there’s a sweetness to this casting decision. Wes’s striving teenager is now grown up and melancholy like everybody else.
11. Owen Wilson as Eli Cash in The Royal Tenenbaums
Wilson’s Eli Cash is the beneficiary of the funniest line in The Royal Tenenbaums (“Everybody knows Custer died at Little Big Horn; what my book presupposes is … maybe he didn’t?”). He also plays a range of emotions, from lovelorn to shamed to dosed out of his mind on mescaline. Wilson puts most of his aw-shucks charm to the side to play this spacey wannabe, portraying Eli instead with a pitiable whine or some far-out detachment. He’s hilarious at it, turning Eli into the film’s true wild card.
10. George Clooney as Foxy Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox
George Clooney’s only collaboration to date with Wes Anderson had him cast as the confident title character in Fantastic Mr. Fox. For as much as Anderson’s films call for his actors to flatten their delivery, his first foray into stop-motion animation picked up the pace considerably, and Clooney zips right along with his character’s fast-talking schemes. The actor’s work with the Coen brothers had honed his gifts for heedless confidence and rapid banter, both of which Foxy has in spades. He earns bonus points for doing Foxy’s signature click-y whistle sound himself.
9. Jason Schwartzman as Ash in Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ash Fox is little. It’s his defining characteristic. It’s what messes with his head and makes him angry and sets him against his golden-boy cousin, Kristofferson. Schwartzman pours all of the requisite bitterness and petulance into Ash, including a few very funny tantrums. All due respect to a mature and talented actor, but Jason Schwartzman whines so well. And he’s just as good at working within the vocal smallness of Ash to get at the kid’s more lovable and ultimately heroic moments.
8. Owen Wilson as Dignan in Bottle Rocket
Wes Anderson’s first film is also his least formally regimented. It’s more indebted to ’90s indie styles than what we’d come to recognize as signature Anderson. Within that space, Owen Wilson’s performance walks in two worlds. His Dignan, the trouble-prone pal to Luke Wilson��s Anthony, is in many ways classic Wes Anderson: He’s dim-witted yet confident; his schemes are elaborate in conception and exercises in buffoonery in execution. Wilson — who lands the most appearances on this list with four — plays this all with a threadbare layer of charm. With an abashed quarter-smile or a penitent downcast glance, he lets Dignan’s essential sadness shine through.
7. Jared Gilman as Sam Shakusky in Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom asks a lot of young Jared Gilman in the role of angry orphan Sam. The character is hyperliterate, precocious, lovelorn yet bold in his pursuit of Suzy, a social outcast yet surprisingly formidable in an altercation. Gilman nails all of it, chirping mouthfuls of dialogue in a manner that evades naturalism but still feels appropriate to this reflective-beyond-his-years kid. He’s also so funny in his ungainly physicality (just watch him dance). Gilman garners the audience’s sympathy but not our pity, gifting Anderson’s film with a most unlikely romantic hero.
6. Jeffrey Wright as Roebuck Wright in The French Dispatch
The inspiration for Roebuck Wright is clearly the author and essayist James Baldwin, which becomes immediately clear from the faux–Dick Cavett interview setup that frames his portion of the film. Jeffrey Wright’s dexterity in his line delivery is an invaluable skill for a performance like this. The farther we get into this story, the more we see Roebuck’s verbosity for the armor it is. In the film’s single best scene, when Roebuck first meets Howitzer while jailed for existing while homosexual, Wright pulls back that armor. With a delicate tear in his eye and a tender expression of gratitude for Howitzer’s simple human decency, he shows us Roebuck’s vulnerability.
5. Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
It’s puzzling that Gwyneth Paltrow never appeared in another Wes Anderson movie after The Royal Tenenbaums, if only because she gave one of the greatest performances in a career where she hasn’t always been lauded for great performances. She’s locked in as Margot, terminally unimpressed and smoking secretly in the bathtub. She’s the most closed-off person in the world, which makes for an acting challenge that Paltrow is more than up for, allowing the details of her character to peek out in brief glimpses: a longing glance at Richie, a disgusted sneer when she learns Eli has been sending her mother his press clippings, barely summoning the range of motion it takes to shrug at her husband. She’s a symphony of bored micro-expressions.
4. Bill Murray as Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Coming off of his dispirited character in Rushmore and the clueless Raleigh St. Clair in Tenenbaums, Steve Zissou is the most classically Murray of the characters he’s played for Anderson. He’s an asshole more than half the time, but Murray chooses to counterbalance that not with rakish charm (as he’s done countless times before) but with an undercurrent of regret. Steve’s first instinct is almost always to say something awful or unkind, and then Murray’s eyes flash a desire to take it back. Murray pulls his performance away from Andersonian style more than most of Wes’s leads, making this as much a Bill Murray film as anything else. As an exception to the rule it works quite well.
3. Jason Schwartzman as Max Fischer in Rushmore
Max Fischer is the most indelible character in the Wes Anderson filmography, a creature both admirable and pitiable in his striving. The kid is flunking out of private school, has spearheaded a dozen or more extracurricular clubs, agitates to have Latin added to the curriculum, and directs a remarkably detailed stage production of Serpico. He’s a monster and a wonder, and Jason Schwartzman doesn’t get nearly enough credit for sketching out every ambitious, aggrieved detail of him. Schwartzman plays everything Max knows, thinks he knows, or pretends he knows as indistinguishable from one another, and he applies this terrifying self-confidence to everything from misguided romance to the astronomy society (which he founded). In many ways, Schwartzman’s been trying to live down Max for his entire career, which he’ll never be able to do because he was too damn good.
2. Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
Gene Hackman was famously ornery on the set of The Royal Tenenbaums, and Anderson has talked about being intimidated by the two-time Oscar winner. Which makes it all the more miraculous that the performance Hackman gives onscreen as deadbeat patriarch Royal Tenenbaum is so attuned to Anderson’s style. Hackman is the least blasé of his onscreen family, but he still manages to weaponize understatement (“I have a pretty bad case of cancer”) amid his more blustery pronouncements. Royal is a scoundrel, but Hackman finds his way to some really lovely moments: boyishly teasing Anjelica Huston’s Etheline about the old times or quietly consoling Chas about his really rough year. He’s also just flat out the funniest anyone’s ever been in a Wes Anderson movie, whether he’s upbraiding Pagoda for once again sticking a knife in him or shagging ass with his grandsons across Anderson’s mirror universe of uptown NYC.
1. Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H. in The Grand Budapest Hotel
For all the overlapping character types and recurring performers with multiple placements on the list, we arrive at a No. 1 performance that really has no parallel. The farcical energy that Ralph Fiennes brings to The Grand Budapest Hotel is unequaled in the Wes Anderson filmography. The fastidious formality of Monsieur Gustave H. exists right alongside his matter-of-fact vulgarity, a combination that Fiennes nails with astounding precision. He imbues Gustave’s impossibly rapid delivery with such dexterity that the audience misses nothing while still feeling slightly dizzy. Like many of Anderson’s protagonists, Gustave is a reprobate of the first order, romancing old ladies for their fortunes and such. Fiennes exhibits that side of him without apology, which only makes his gallant side feel all the more genuine. It’s a performance that brings together every element on our fussy little rubric: Fiennes’s line deliveries are perfectly understated; his mannerisms give Gustave the perfect hint of striving pretension; his physical comedy (the way he runs ought to be studied) is a gift; and in his most sincere moments with Zero, he adopts the sad-eyed regret of a man, in the words of a another character in the film, whose world had vanished long before he entered it.
More on Wes Anderson
- Asteroid City’s Ending Explains Wes Anderson’s Whole Deal
- The Objects Wes Anderson Hoards in His New York Office
- Wes Anderson Has Gone Mad
