Warming up: Spanish-born Gascón honed her craft on Mexican telenovelas and in 2018 began the transgender transition that helped inform her “Emilia Pérez” performance.
Killer scene: Adorned with gold teeth, stringy hair, face tattoos and beard, Gascón’s crime boss Manitas shocks Zoe Saldaña’s lawyer character by confiding: “I want to be a woman.”
Quotable: Recapping her rapport with director Jacques Audiard, Gascón said in a statement, “Since I don’t speak French and he doesn’t speak Spanish, I asked Jacques, ‘How will we communicate?’ He gave me a very beautiful answer: ‘Telepathically!’”

“Anora” (as tender-tough sex worker Ani)

Warming up: Homeschooled in L.A., Madison played a difficult teen in Pamela Adlon’s acclaimed “Better Things” series and portrayed Manson family member Susan “Sadie” Atkins in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” Before filming “Anora,” she learned how to twerk.
Killer scene: During a chaotic 28-minute sequence, petite Madison as Ani likely sets a record for the most F-bombs dropped per minute while breaking an intruder’s nose and biting his accomplice on the neck after they invade the mansion she shares with the cowardly son of a Russian oligarch.
Quotable: Madison told The Times “Anora” preparations included asking her dad to get a stripper pole. “Can you pick something up at this place and install it at my house? He called me after and was like, ‘Hey ... is this for a job?’”

Demi Moore, 62

“The Substance” (as youth-obsessed actress Elisabeth Sparkle)

Warming up: “Ghost” and “Indecent Proposal” made Moore the highest-paid actress in Hollywood at one time, but it was the movie star’s career as an over-50 talent that fueled her understanding of the film’s show business-as-jungle metaphors.
Killer scene: Getting ready for a date, Moore as Elisabeth studies her mature face in the mirror, finds it wanting, smears the lipstick into a grotesque smile and claws her hair with the fury of a trapped animal.
Quotable: “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress,” Moore famously said last month in her Golden Globes acceptance speech. “That corroded me over time to the point where I thought maybe I was done with what I was supposed to do. And at a low point, this bonkers script came across my desk and the universe told me, ‘You are not done.’”