1. Freddie Highmore – Finding Neverland
Freddie Highmore has put together quite a body of work. In addition to this exceedingly deserving entry, he has appeared in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Five Children and It, The Spiderwick Chronicles and is now playing a young Norman Bates for TV’s “Bates Motel”. Finding Neverland was not his first performance, but it really established him with a deeply moving performance as one of the troubled young sons of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the young lady whose family became friends of Peter Pan creator J M Barrie. As with the very best performances on this list, Highmore conveys maturity and fragility at the same time, that subtle blend where the circumstances of life have forced you to grow up (or at least pretend to be grown up) despite being and needing to be a young child.
In much the same way as River Phoenix’s breakdown in Stand By Me lingers long in the memory, so does Highmore’s heart-breaking conversation on a bench with Depp’s Barrie in Finding Neverland. Young Peter has lost so much and hurts so incredibly deeply, yet it is not simply a case of a young actor turning on the waterworks. He conveys pain and loss so profoundly and with the benefit of a Depp performance that matches him, subtle stroke for subtle stroke, Highmore quietly goes about the business of breaking us.
