20. ‘The Regime’
The venomous chancellor of an unnamed authoritarian European country, Elena Vernham is one of Kate Winslet’s most scene-stealing characters. No wonder, as she’s in most scenes of the scabrously funny HBO satire series created by ‘Succession”’writer Will Tracy. The hypochondriacal ruler veers toward caricature, a grotesque funhouse mirror version of any autocrat, but Winslet grounds Elena in neuroses and Freudian vestiges of her character also growing up in a palatial family — that Drew Barrymore-esque side mouth is just perfect. That’s because Winslet worked with a neuroscientist and a therapist to unpack how the trauma of royal upbringing would manifest physically in Elena as an adult, and the performance is filled with unique touches like this that only Winslet could devise.