Small roles, big performances: 4 under-the-radar standouts from the last year in film

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During Oscar season, The Envelope also likes to celebrate actors in roles that might not otherwise garner awards attention.You can sense a whole life behind these portrayals; they draw you in and make you want to know more.Amid the controlled chaos that is Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” young Willa (Chase Infiniti) is brought to a nunnery that used to be part of her parents’ revolutionary group French 75.

What Willa doesn’t know is that her mother (Teyana Taylor) betrayed the group in order to save herself from prison, and is still alive.Sister Rochelle, played by April Grace with seething intensity, sets her straight.“Your mother was a rat, and that makes you a baby rat,” she spits, and Willa’s world crumbles further.Grace will be familiar to eagle-eyed PTA fans; in “Magnolia,” she played Gwenovier, the reporter who calmly destroyed Tom Cruise’s character.

When the offer of Sister Rochelle came, “I didn’t need to look at the role, I trust Paul implicitly,” she says.“He is there for the actor, whatever you need.”Grace has worked in film and television for over 30 years, “but I started out in theater, so character development is really important to me.” She created a backstory for Sister Rochelle, building up the reasons she was so hostile to Willa.

“Sister Rochelle is all about community, and you don’t betray your community.”Of Infiniti, Grace notes, “She was just lovely, and she made my job really easy, just looking at her” trying to act tough, “like you don’t even know you’re a baby.”Jacobi Jupe plays the title role in “Hamnet,” as the ill-fated son of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley).He was thrown into the deep end on his first day, when his father leaves the family for London.

“I didn’t really know Paul, and I had to get so intimate and so upset but hold it togethe...