Daniel Kaluuya’s 10 best performances so far
Catapulting himself to contemporary success after just over 15 years in the industry, Daniel Kaluuya has grown from British acting obscurity to being an Oscar-winning Hollywood talent. Having learned his trade in multiple TV comedies, including That Mitchell and Webb Look, Psychoville and the teenage drama Skins, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that Kaluuya would reach the heights of industry fame.
Though he made a brief appearance in Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario in 2015, it was his collaboration with Jordan Peele in the cultural behemoth of 2017s Get Out that would truly make him a household name. Taking the lead role in the socio-politically spiked horror thriller, Kaluuya convinced the industry of his potential, producing a performance that exuded confidence, personality and class.
Collaborations with esteemed filmmakers Ryan Cooger, Steve McQueen and Melina Matsoukas quickly followed, working across arthouse and blockbuster cinema with the release of respective films Black Panther, Widows and Queen & Slim. It was in 2021 when his contemporary success was definitively illustrated, however, owning the screen with mesmerising power as Fred Hampton in Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah.
Kaluuya is rightfully considered to be one of the greatest actors of contemporary cinema, having formed a tight creative bond with Jordan Peele, creating a formidable partnership that offers hope for the future of innovative filmmaking.
Daniel Kaluuya’s 10 best performances:
10. Baby (Daniel Mulloy, 2010)
Kaluuya demonstrated his promising talent in one of his earlier film roles, playing a thief in Daniel Mulloy’s Baby. Until this point, most of the actor’s credits were minor supporting parts or theatre performances. Therefore, alongside just a few actors, such as Arta Dobroshi, Kaluuya gets his chance to shine. The film took home a British Independent Film Award and an Edinburgh Film Festival accolade after its Sundance premiere.
An event that the director had witnessed inspired the film. Mulloy recalled seeing “a woman being pick-pocketed. I interrupted the thief, and it turned out to be a crew working together – they pulled out knives.”
9. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)
Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 crime thriller Sicario featured Kaluuya as an FBI Special Agent, Reggie Wayne. As the partner of Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, the pair are faced with the task of bringing down a powerful drug cartel in Mexico. The British actor is an excellent addition to the cast, holding his own alongside established stars like Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro and Victor Garber.
According to the actor, working with Villeneuve was a treat. He explained: “He really pushed for me to get the role in this so I’m really appreciative that he got me the part in this thing that I’m so proud of. He’s amazing, he’s an amazing man.”
8. Johnny English Reborn (Oliver Parker, 2011)
As the sequel to Johnny English, Oliver Parker’s spy comedy Johnny English Reborn was a box-office success, eventually spawning another instalment in the series in 2018. However, Kaluuya is only present in the second film alongside a stacked cast of actors such as Rowan Atkinson, Rosamund Pike, Dominic West, Gillian Anderson and Richard Schiff. The film returns to the eponymous spy eight years after the original film’s events, following his stint in Tibet training in a monastery.
Kaluuya stars as Colin Tucker, English’s M17 agent sidekick. With plenty of laughs and lighthearted fun, continuing its parody of the James Bond series, Johnny English Reborn is certainly not one of Kaluuya’s most defining roles, but one that expresses his versatility as an actor.
7. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Following his critically-acclaimed performance in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Kaluuya joined the cast of his highest-grossing project to date, Black Panther. The film is part of the highly lucrative and popular Marvel Cinematic Universe and saw the actor appear alongside stars such as the late Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Angela Bassett. Kaluuya played T’Challa’s friend, W’Kabi, also head of the Border Tribe’s security.
Black Panther has widely been considered one of Marvel‘s greatest films, earning a whopping $1.3billion worldwide at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing movie by a black filmmaker and the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time.
6. Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)
Steve McQueen’s 2018 neo-noir heist thriller Widows, based on a screenplay by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, starred Kaluuya as Jatemme Manning, a mob enforcer and the brother of crime boss Jamal, played by Brian Tyree Henry. He appeared alongside Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriquez, Cynthia Evrio and Elizabeth Debicki, his character often lingering in the background.
The actor’s attention to detail, utilising subtle facial gestures and movements, earned him a nomination for ‘Supporting Actor of the Year’ at the London Film Critics’ Circle awards. The film made its way onto countless lists of the best films of 2018, with Kaluuya’s performance receiving particular critical acclaim.
5. Black Mirror – Fifteen Million Merits (Euros Lyn, 2011)
Often considered to be among the very best episodes of Charlie Brooker’s bleak sci-fi series Black Mirror, episode two, Fifteen Million Merits, of the very first season is an ingenious take on reality TV that features Kaluuya in a leading role. The episode tells the story of a self-contained world where people’s lives consist of sweating away on exercise bikes to gain credits which they can spend on useless frivolities, like clothes for their virtual avatars, pornographic material or a ticket of admission onto one of society’s biggest game shows.
Kaluuya plays Bing, a man who has become desensitised to the inhumanity of his own existence, who wakes up to the depravity of his situation and tries to help a woman gain fame in a singing competition. Tragic and absorbing, it’s one of Black Mirror’s greatest stories, no doubt helped by Kaluuya’s energetic lead performance.
4. Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)
Honouring the history of cinema, Jordan Peele’s 2022 masterpiece Nope, was somewhat misunderstood by fans and critics at the time who were hoping for another intense horror akin to 2017s Get Out. Instead, Peele channelled his inner Steven Spielberg and created a spectacularly innovative blockbuster that tells the story of a mysterious flying object that stalks the skies of a rural American community and the rag-tag group who feel compelled to solve its mystery.
With the help of excellent performances from Brandon Perea and Keke Palmer, Kaluuya’s reserved lead performance is allowed to flourish, giving audiences a contemporary hero who doesn’t abide by the cliches of generic cinematic male leads. Battling inner turmoil, Kaluuya’s OJ is one of the most likeable Hollywood protagonists in years, feeling far more real than the cut-and-paste template.
3. Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas, 2019)
Politically charged with marvellous intensity, Melina Matsoukas’ Queen & Slim is a modern American road movie truly like no other. Telling the story of Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Kaluuya), a couple on their first date whose lives are turned upside down when they are both pulled over by a police officer, Matsoukas’ film is a stylish and subversive genre flick that concludes with a satisfying flourish.
After a moderately successful date of simmering chemistry, the pair became entangled in a complicated relationship, with Kaluuya and Turner-Smith holding the film together with their magnetising central presence. Striving for greatness, Queen & Slim largely reaches the heights of its ambitions, but where it falters, Kaluuya is there to fuel the film onwards.
2. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
It’s difficult to translate just how successful Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out was upon its release, seizing the contemporary zeitgeist with an iron grip whilst thrilling critics across the world. Picking up an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and a nomination for ‘Best Picture’, whilst Peele’s deft direction made the film so memorable, large credit has also got to be given to Kaluuya for his outstanding performance.
Playing the role of Chris Washington, a young man who, whilst visiting his girlfriend’s parents for the weekend, gets caught up in a terrifying family plot, Kaluuya provides some real emotional weight to the story, which toys with fantastical elements. Alongside Allison Williams, Caleb Landry Jones and Catherine Keener, Kaluuya proves himself as a mighty leading man.
1. Judas & the Black Messiah (Shaka King, 2021)
Some actors work for their whole career to earn an esteemed Academy Award for their efforts, but Daniel Kaluuya earned an Oscar statuette after just over a decade of working in the industry. The win was highly deserved, too, beating out the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen and his co-star LaKeith Stanfield to claim the prize for his role as Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s.
A biographical re-telling of the civil rights icon’s life, which entwines the barbaric FBI mission to silence his authority, Judas & the Black Messiah is an emotional drama with a scintillating lead performance from Kaluuya. The actor’s power and electricity become the film’s beating drum, creating a cauldron of intensity that is added to by the excellent supporting cast that includes Stanfield, Dominique Thorne and Jesse Plemons. But his performance is no mere mouthpiece for political dialogue, Kaluuya accesses the man behind the activist, revealing his innate compassion and strength with effortless charm.
