Finalists: "Jing Zhou" (Chao Deng) and "Halla" (Halldora Geirhardsottir) from Shadow and Woman at War, respectively, both are waging impossible-to-win wars (plus both actors get to play dual roles so we've grouped them. Double fun for those actors -- and audiences, too -- when the movies are this good!; As last hurrahs go Avengers Endgame is one big long love letter to "Iron Man" (Robert Downey Jr)

Semi Finalists:  "Captain Marvel" (Brie Larson) in Captain Marvel, "Jo March" (Saoirse Ronan) in Little Women, "Alita" (Rosa Salazar and animators) in Alita: Battle Angel, and "Billy Batson/Shazam" (Asher Angel & Zachary Levi) in Shazam!

Guilty of: Incessant whining and self-pity, matricide, revenge killings, stalking women, frequent dancing, inciting mass chaos, telling bad jokes.

Accomplices: None unless you count inhumane bureaucracies as an easy scapegoat for his crimes.

Sentence: Will live on to drive Bruce Wayne batty.

 Guilty of: Revenge plotting, power-mongering, casual murders, and elaborately designed gaslighting.

Accomplices: Staff of visual effects artists.

Sentence: Karmic retribution. Death by his own devices intended to kill Spider-Man.

Runners Up

Finalists: Tom Hooper of Cats. 

Semi Finalists: Greta (Isabelle Huppert) in Greta, Ma (Octavia Spencer) in Ma, Gabby (Christina Hendricks and animators) Toy Story 4, Dibs (Juliette Binoche) in High Life, Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Yon Rogg (Jude Law) in Captain Marvel

NOTE: All too many villains this year were too derivative / regurgitated / continued from past glories to factor in. This hindered Toy Story 4's Gabby from making the nominee list and also means that the villains from Terminator: Dark Fate , Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, and Avengers Endgame (despite the game actors involved) were easy exclusions. Thanos, for example, was a nominee last year in this category but not new or evolved or different enough in Endgame to factor in again.

Finalists: "Nora Fanshaw" (Laura Dern) loves to hear herself talk in Marriage Story - but it's really the kicking off the high heels that sells it, "Gigi" (Billie Lourde) is everywhere you look, running on her own schedule, living in her own world, in Booksmart

Semi Finalists: "Judy Garland" (Renée Zellweger) in Judy; "Rudolph Nureyev" (Oleg Ivenko) in The White Crow; "Bo Peep" (Annie Potts and animators) in Toy Story 4; "Josephine Chesterfield" (Anne Hathaway) in The Hustle; and "Becky Something" (Elisabeth Moss) in Her Smell

Finalists: "Minnie" (Isla Fisher) turns the supportive wife trope on its head, or possibly its back with hedonism and polyamorous pragmatism; In Little Women via her options of "Friedrich/Laurie" (Louis Garrel / Timothée Chalamet), Saoirse Ronan continues to be the unchalleged screen queen of win/win situations in choice of romantic partners (see also Lady Bird / Brooklyn)

Semi Finalists: "Dibs" (Juliette Binoche) really gets into that fuck-box in High Life; "Eduardo" (Cesar Vicente) is 'the first desire' without even realizing it in Pain and Glory. "Constance" (Diane Lane) in Serenity... it's her (literal) role to be a booty call; "Jung Tae-seok" is the cop in The Gangster The Cop and the Devil and plays it with real BDE; and all those horny Cats but particularly Old Deuteronomy, Skimbleshanks, Macavity, and Bombalurina

Finalists: Those redacted eyes and oddly posed bodies for Parasite, super-imposed wordplay for Synonyms, and throwback illustrated posterwork for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

 Semi Finalists: masculine and minimalist for Ford v Ferrari,  war paint cool for Alita Battle Angel,  paperback portraiture for Last Black Man in San Francisco, and Florence Pugh's anguish during MidSommar