W Magazine's 'best performances' photo shoot

Best Performances - The most remarkable moments in film this past year weren’t 3-D action sequences but characters so real they hurt. Here, the actors who made us believe.

Natalie Portman in “Black Swan”
“The movie that I watched the most when I was growing up was Dirty Dancing. I always loved Penny, probably because I was really like Baby. I was a Jewish girl from a Jewish family, so of course I liked the tall, skinny blond girl.”

Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network”


“I started acting to be included in a group, because I felt excluded in school. The final product was out of my control, so it didn’t really matter to me. I just liked being in a group of people that didn’t kick my shin.”

Justin Timberlake & Andrew Garfield in “The Social Network”

“What if Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker suffered from the same insecurity and fear and paranoia? Mark dealt with those feelings by inventing Facebook. And my character, Sean Parker, invented Sean Parker. He created his own persona.”—Justin Timberlake

“I found The Goonies very inspiring. I identified with every character: Mikey, the leader; Mouth, the trickster; Data, the inventor; and Chunk, this lovely, beautiful, sad, misunderstood, slightly larger kid. The Goonies is boys needing to be boys on their path to manhood. It’s a classic.”—Andrew Garfield

Dakota Fanning, Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Elizabeth Reaser in Vanity Fair

For the July issue of Vanity Fair, Norman Jean Roy photographed the spooky beauties of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse—five vampires (Dakota Fanning, Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Elizabeth Reaser, Bryce Dallas Howard) and one lone lady werewolf (Julia Jones).

Nancy Jo Sales was on set, where, between takes, the girls mused on the gothic romance that has everyone palpitating.

Nikki Reed plays the disapproving Rosalie Cullen. Here’s her take on the story’s appeal: “Bella and Edward’s love is very taboo and forbidden,” says Reed, “and I think that kind of represents all youthful relationships, because that’s what all first loves feel like. … It’s sort of borderline, like, insane.”

Elizabeth Reaser, who plays vampire mom Esme, exclaims on the attractive young men of Twilight: “Oh, it gets so old, you have no idea,” says Reaser. “It has no effect on me. They’re all gorgeous and lovely boys. … You just want someone interesting and weird at a certain point. I have a massive crush on Larry David.”