Carell plays John du Pont, a real life millionaire who decides to sponsor a US Olympic wrestling team. Carell is unrecognizable as du Pont.  He wears a gigantic prosthetic nose, false teeth and he speaks with a wheezy mumble.  For some, Carell's performance might borderline on cartoonish, but it hit all the right notes for me. Du Pont is a delusional spoiled brat psychopath for whom you don't know whether or not you should laugh with him or at him; feel sorry for him or be terrified of him.  Not everybody is going to be able to appreciate his performance, but you have to at least give the traditionally comedic actor credit for trying something different.

You will notice a theme among many of the leading performances of the year.  Many of the actors are playing real people. In The Imitation Game, Cumberbatch plays mathematician Alan Turing.  I wasn't familiar with Turing, but it's an amazing story.  Turing helped defeat the Germans in World War II by cracking the Nazi code by essentially inventing the world's first computer.  While thousands of soldiers were being honored (and rightly so) as heroes, it was people like Alan Turing saving lives while wearing a suit and tie.  They never received the recognition they deserved until decades later. Cumberbatch gives a powerful performance as Turing, a brilliant man doing things that will change the world, all while hiding who he truly is under the threat of criminal punishment.  The film is a testament to where we were in the world and how far we've come.  I won't give it away, but the end of the film is truly heart-breaking.

Ralph Fiennes is kind of the opposite of Steve Carell.  He's had an amazing career, but most of his filmography is filled with dramatic roles.  Fiennes plays Gustave, a legendary concierge at the famous Grand Budapest Hotel.  Fiennes is fantastic as a man that puts the welfare of his hotel and its patrons before everything.  He seems like your typical prim and proper Englishman, which makes his sudden outbursts of vulgarity all the more hilarious. Much of the laughs come from the chemistry between Gustave and his trusty lobby boy, Zero.  The high jinks these two find themselves in is such fertile ground for laughs.  If it wasn't such a strong year for lead actors, you might have seen the Academy recognize a comedic performance.  A rare feat.

To say Tom Hardy had a fantastic year is a drastic understatement. Hardy also starred in Locke, a film where he is the only actor that appears on screen.  It's literally him in a car talking on the phone. The whole movie.  Hardy's performance is so solid that it's never dull or boring.  That being said, I didn't choose Hardy for Locke, I chose him for The Drop.  The Drop is one of my favorite films of the year and he transforms himself even more to play Bob, a quiet bartender who gets caught in the middle of mobsters and thieves. Hardy should be a household name by now.  He burst on to the scene in the blockbuster hit Inception.  He then played the villain Bane in the Dark Knight Rises.  In between, he's turned in strong performances in films like Warrior, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Lawless.  There's no reason why his name shouldn't be up there with the best Hollywood has to offer.  Hardy takes over as Max in the upcoming Mad Max film.  I have a hunch I won't have to keep explaining to people who Tom Hardy is come summer.

Jake Gyllenhaal has been around a long time.  His first role was as Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers way back in 1991.  Like any young actor, he's had his ups and downs, but Jake has been on a hot streak for about a decade now.  Zodiac, Prisoners and End of Watch are three of the better films from their respective years.  Even this year, Jake gave two great performances in Enemy and of course in Nightcrawler.  Should he have been nominated for Nightcrawler? Yes.  Does it matter?  No, because his performance will be remembered longer that most of the other performances that were nominated.  Gyllenhaal literally transforms himself for the role of Lou Bloom, shedding almost 40 pounds to play the wide-eyed entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to succeed.

Oscar Isaac has been around for a little while, but I didn't take notice of him until I saw him in Drive.  In a film full of memorable scenes and performances, Isaac really stood out.  He then showed he could be a leading man in Inside Llewyn Davis.  He was receiving some Oscar buzz for his performance, but fell off.  His role in A Most Violent Year was also getting buzz, but it was just such a strong year for lead actor that he got squeezed out.  Regardless, Isaac commands the screen as an immigrant business owner determined to do things the right way and not give in to his environment of corruption.  Isaac's performance is going to conjure up memories of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather.  While nobody can beat Pacino's iconic performance, the characters share similar themes of men who are faced with difficult decisions in order to accomplish the American Dream.

Where did that come from? Michael Keaton has been giving strong supporting performances for a while now, but it's been a very long time since he's been a leading man.  Birdman might just be the best performance of his career.  One can't help but draw comparisons to Keaton's character Riggan, a washed up actor known for playing a superhero named Birdman.  As we know, Keaton famously walked away from the Batman franchise after two films, so there might be a little bit of Keaton in Riggan.  That being said, there's a lot more to his performance than just the meta connection.  Birdman really does dig deep and deal with themes of mental illness, Hollywood, ego, social media, actors and much more.  A career rejuvenating performance.

Yes, David Oyelowo should have been nominated for an Oscar.  I don't know how, but it should have happened.  Oyelowo has had a busy year starring in Selma, Interstellar and A Most Violent Year in 2014, but before that he was a relative unknown.  His memorable performance as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. should change that.  Oyelowo may not have really looked like King, but I felt like he really captured his spirit.  This is especially the case when King is in front of a group and giving one of his famous speeches. That's when he truly feels like the King we've all seen and heard.  There are also some very good quieter moments to Selma, moments where we see a conflicted, doubting King.  It really humanizes him and showed another side of a man that most people only know from some of his famous speeches.  For me, Oyelowo's performance is right up there with Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in Lincoln.

Eddie Redmayne's performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything pretty much checks all the Oscar boxes.  Playing a real person?  Check.  Playing somebody suffering from a debilitating disease?  Check.  Playing an English person?  Check.  It was kind of a no-brainer.  Still, it's a fantastic performance.  The first film I remember seeing Eddie Redmayne in was Les Miserables.  Among a star-studded cast, he really stood out.  I'm not sure I would have imagined he was capable of such a powerful performance as Stephen Hawking, but he really did knock it out of the park.  It's amazing how much acting Redmayne does with just his eyes and other various facial expressions in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is another young, talented actor that we are going to be hearing a lot from in the coming years.