The credit for Caesar has to be split among the Rise of the Planet of the Apes' CGI team and Andy Serkis, who has cemented his reputation as the best actor nobody would be able to recognize. The visual effects artists who created Caesar did a superb job of making him seem so real that it barely took any suspension of disbelief to watch his interactions with the human characters in the film. Had the CGI seemed fake it would have destroyed the entire movie. And what more can be said of Serkis? He is now responsible for the two greatest motion-capture characters in history, taking two very non-human characters and, in bringing them to life, finding their humanity and their soul.

Coming in a distant third, despite three first place votes, is the second version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo heroine Lisbeth Salander. In only the second year of this category's existence we already have a character making a repeat appearance, although the character is very different from the way she was portrayed in the first adaptation of Larsson's novel. There was some concern when it was announced that largely unknown actress Rooney Mara would be taking on the most talked-about part of the year as punker hacker Lisbeth Salander. But all fears were allayed by Mara's tough but vulnerable portrayal of Salander. Salander is a difficult, multi-dimensional role, and it is a testament to the two actresses who have played her that she has now made two appearances in this category.

The only character taken from real life to break into this category comes in at number four, having by far the smallest part of any character on this list. Technically Midnight in Paris is about novelist Gil Pender travelling between modern-day and 1920s Paris, but the show was stolen by the numerous portrayals of great literary figures with whom Gil interacts. Easily the most memorable was Ernest Hemingway, portrayed as an eccentric egomaniac by character actor Corey Stoll. It is difficult to say how true to reality Stoll's performance as Hemingway was, but that isn't really relevant. What matters is that Hemingway's various grand pronouncements are both entertaining and oddly poignant, making him easily the best bit part of the year.

Another character we've seen on screen before drops into the fifth spot. There was a lot of pressure on the cast of X-Men: First Class to step into roles played so well in the original trilogy, and they made the smart choice of making the roles their own, rather than trying to be as similar to their older counterparts as possible. Of course, with most great superhero movies the best part is the villain, so it is no surprise that Erik Lensherr, AKA Magneto, shows up here. Magneto is one of the most complex and fascinating villains in superhero history, and First Class did his origin story justice, showing him turn from cautiously working with the humans to fighting against them. Of course, Michael Fassbender's performance breathed life into Magneto in much the same way that Ian McKellan did.

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