10 Actors Who Just Gave Their Best Performance Ever

Multi-hyphenate Bradley Cooper's new Netflix drama stems from and goes to unexpected places, not least with its central focus on composer Leonard Bernstein, who found popularity in the '50s, '60s and '70s, but is hardly a household name for the majority of the streaming service's audience base.

Rather than being about the music, however, the film is about the often tumultuous relationship between Bernstein (Cooper) and the actor Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), an on-off 25-year stint that changed their lives completely.

Bradley Cooper may be the titular maestro with the fake nose, as well as the talent behind the camera, but Carey Mulligan is the highlight, knocking it out of the park with a scene-stealing performance that makes her top-billing make sense. She takes centre stage for a lot of the film, and proves the perfect foil to Cooper's Bernstein, playing the best and worst of their romance with equal greatness, making us understand the depth of their love and all the reasons it is bad for them. It's a clear career-best for the actress, and that is saying something considering her work in the likes of An Education, Promising Young Woman and The Great Gatsby.