The 101 Best Movie Performances of the 21st Century

The great Philip Seymour Hoffman once compared acting to “lugging things up staircases in your brain.” “I think that’s a thing people don’t understand,” he said. “It is that exhausting. If you’re doing it well, if you’re concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head.”