By • -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.”After weeks of trying to put together this list, let me tell you that we feel the same about simply figuring out the best acting performances of our time.What you have before you is The Ringer’s ranking of the 101 best movie performances of the 21st century. When we came up with the idea, we didn't realize how hard it would be to limit the list to that number. That means that a few of our favorites are missing—and assuredly some of yours, too. (Rest assured, PSH makes an appearance here—and very high up.)After a few weeks of balloting, back-and-forth debates, and just overall list-shaping mechanics, we feel great about where this ranking landed. However, a few notes up top.The Best Movie Performances of the Century The Best Movie Performances of the Century We had only one hard-and-fast rule: only one performance per actor on the final list.That means that while we could’ve chosen a half dozen or so Hoffman performances—alas, there is no Along Came Polly—he has only one. We made this decision for two reasons:We wanted to put a stamp on the performances we felt were truly worthy.It allowed us to get some more interesting entries onto the list. Rather than loading it up with Cate Blanchett or Denzel Washington roles, we were able to get some smaller performances on here.But while the final list had only one role per actor, the balloting process offered us many to choose from. Here’s the total list of actors who received votes for three or more performances from our committee:Most of these actors landed a p