5 Best One-Scene Film Performances

Every screenwriter knows the struggle of trying to make every page count. I have bent myself over backward to make certain scenes hit or to just make sure there's something memorable along the way.

But what you can't plan on is a character actor showing up for work and absolutely nailing the single scene they have, one that audiences will talk about later and one that will echo in our hearts and minds long after we've seen the movie.

That kind of magic is what brings us to the movies and brings us back to our favorite ones over and over again.

Today, I want to go over five of the best one-scene performances and look at how they light up the screen and how they can be emulated by writers and directors.

Let's dive in.

1. Alec Baldwin — Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Character: Blake

• Director: James Foley
• Writer: David Mamet (Based on his play)
• Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce

Do you remember the first time you saw this scene? It gave me the kind of anxiety I wouldn't feel again until I was a Hollywood assistant.

Baldwin as Blake is like the epitome of single-scene domination. He rolls into a rain-slicked real estate office for exactly eight minutes and walks back and forth, addressing his troops like he's Patton.

And he gave us one ot the best movie lines in history.

"Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only."

You need David Mamet's writing for this stuff, but you also needan acotrl ike Baldwin to carry the weight of the scene. It's funny, it's scary, and it winds up turning the friction up on all the characters, and puts them in a place where success is weighing on them.

2. Beatrice Straight — Network (1976)

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Character: Louise Schumacher

• Director: Sidney Lumet
• Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
• Cast: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Ned Beatty

I wanted to put this first, but I went with Baldwin. I am still internally debating it. She is only in this movie for like five minutes, and yet this scene shakes me to my core. She plays a wife confronting her husband (William Holden) about his cliché affair, and she holds nothing back. She tears into him in ways that are so visceral.

This one scene earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. To this day, it is the shortest performance ever to win an Oscar.

This speaks to the power of writing as well, as we get a brilliant monologue from screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. But the acting brings its power.

3. Gene Jones — No Country for Old Men (2007)

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Character: Gas Station Proprietor

• Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Writer: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy)
• Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, Gene Jones

The coin flip scene in No Country For Old Men is like what I go back to every time I have to write a single thematic scene in any movie. It's so perfect and so thrilling.

Gene Jones absolutely hollers his own opposite Javier Bardem in a back-and-forth that he wins, even if he has no idea what he has won.

The scene builds a suffocating sense of dread entirely through subtext as Jones plays with the confusion, meanwhile, a monster is taking form across from him that is so evil he can't fathom it. It rocks.

4. Viola Davis — Doubt (2008)

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Character: Mrs. Miller

• Director: John Patrick Shanley
• Writer: John Patrick Shanley (Based on his play)
• Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

See, I feel like people remember this movie just for the big reveal at the end. But the real power in it is in this eight-minute scene where Viola Davis seems to shake the earth. She is across from Meryl Streep, shifting the moral axis of the story by force.

This could have been such a cliché scene, but instead of moral outrage, she plays the scene with quiet contempt, and as a mom who is stuck in a situation she believes will get better if nothing is done. It throws everyone off and wins at pulling the audience into a situation they have no idea how to solve.

5. Matthew McConaughey — The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Character: Mark Hanna

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• Writer: Terence Winter (Based on the book by Jordan Belfort)
• Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner

Alright, so this, I think technically we see him in other scenes at the start, but like this is the one scene he's actually in and where he actually does something. Matthew McConaughey plays Mark Hanna, the senior stockbroker who inducts a green Leonardo DiCaprio into the true, dark mechanics of Wall Street.

As the legend has it, McCon ad-libbed that thump and Leo rolled with it. And we got this legendary martini lunch that gives the movie an actual beating heart and bravado it was missing before this; it arcs with us. We begin to love the greed.

Summing It All Up

As screenwriters and directors, writing a great one-scene role requires stripping away everything non-essential.

These characters work because they possess absolute clarity of purpose and motivation. They have one scene to get what they want and need and desire, and that gives the audience a clear connection and something to root for. The rest is magic.

Let me know what you think in the comments.