10 Actors Who Just Recently Did Their Best Work Ever

Zendaya's had one hell of a 2024. Firstly, she appeared in Dune: Part Two, and not only was that one of the year's best and most beloved films, but she gave quite arguably the best performance in the whole thing, managing to upstage an already extraordinary ensemble cast. And then, just a month later, she outdid herself in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers.

In Challengers, Zendaya plays Tashi, a former tennis superstar-turned-coach who gets caught up in a complicated love triangle involving herself and two tennis rivals: her ex-boyfriend Patrick (Josh O'Connor) and her husband Art (Mike Faist). The film is also a career highlight for O'Connor and Faist, but nonetheless, this is the Zendaya show. She absolutely commands the screen, sometimes just with a silent look, and it's impossible to look away from her.

Put it like this, if anyone was still in doubt as to Zendaya's acting talent, they will most likely eat their words after watching this, Zendaya's finest big-screen performance to date. Ironically, Challengers is a flawed movie and arguably one of the year's most overrated, yet even though she was working with a script that felt like something out of a trashy airport novel, Zendaya still absolutely killed it.