2015 was the year of Alicia Vikander. The middle of the year found her playing sidekick in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), a femme fatale in Son of a Gun, and a romantic role in the under-the-radar Bradley Cooper dramedy Burnt. But her successful year was bookended by two triumphant cinematic achievements for which she received the most praise: Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015) in April and Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015) in November, the film for which she has received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

The daughter of veteran Swedish stage actor Maria Fahl Vikander, Alicia first had ambitions of becoming a ballerina. She trained at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in her teens, but upon discovering she had more aptitude for theatrics than what would be required of a professional ballerina, she turned her focus toward acting. For The Danish Girl, she received her first Academy Award nomination—and, according to Eddie Redmayne, is responsible for his concurrent nomination. “She’s a force of nature,” he said in an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip from the film. “She’s just the most extraordinary talent. She has this deep, visceral relationship with her emotions. She challenged me to step up my game continuously.”

In The Danish Girl, Vikander plays Gerda Wegener, the wife of Lili Elbe, who history believes was the first to openly live as a transgender woman following sexual reassignment surgery. The film is relevant to our current climate of transgender awareness, as evidenced in media attention paid to Caitlin Jenner, films like Tangerine (2015) and television series such as the acclaimed Jeffrey Tambor vehicle Transparent (2014) and Orange is the New Black (2013 - ), yet the film attempts to show also that its story is universally relatable. The couple’s relationship in The Danish Girl is an emotional and profound journey between two people. Vikander plays a woman who must support her husband’s wishes and simultaneously mourn the loss of the lover she’s grown to know. That requires a tremendous capacity for love, and Vikander, a self-described romantic, said she loves the forceful, intense care and support Gerda has for her husband through her ability to see the bigger picture of his desires.

“Sometimes when people are just giving and loving and caring and supporting, people can question not being active, but she always sees a bigger picture, and she knows where she is in that,” Vikander explained to Deadline. “She sees the real person that she loves and will support that person through anything. I was touched by that reading the script – the kind of immense amount of love between those people, and going through what they did in a time when there was no reference. Of course, that was probably what I was most nervous of, to translate the capacity of unconditional love back to the screen.

Furthering that sentiment, she told The Guardian, “It’s about them going through a transition, not just him. In any relationship, when you go through any big change, you struggle to find your new constellation, your new ground. It takes a while to determine what the new relationship between you is. I could relate to that. That got to me immediately.”

The film follows the evolution of their marriage, rendering the title a perfect fit – it could just as easily describe Gerda as Lili. Vikander loves this part of the film’s construction – she is not there as a crutch for Redmayne’s character but an equal presence in a narrative about the story of their union.

“I don’t think so much about whether I’m playing a strong person or not – it’s not that the character needs to be loud or straightforward,” she said. “It can be a fragile, flawed person, but if they have enough dimension, and depth that you understand them even at their weakest, that’s a strong character to me. Then you have something to play, and play with. It’s about not being ‘the girl’.”

That approach seems to have paid off. As CinemaBlend describes, “her performance in The Danish Girl is so supremely layered with nuanced emotion, heart-breaking angst, and raw magnetism that you can’t take your eyes off her as you’re too scared you’ll miss another moment of beauty. Seriously, Alicia Vikander is that good.”

Variety concurs, writing, “Gerda’s story is as emotionally compelling as Lili’s, as she has to override her own desires and reservations in order to set her husband free. The film is fashioned very much as the story of a marriage in crisis, forced to end despite deep reserves of love on either side. Toggling sensuality and sensitivity, with a latent streak of anger throughout, Vikander plays her half beautifully.”

For Vikander, the role completed a year in which she took her place at the top of her profession and industry. The humanity she brought to a robot in Ex Machina hinted at her ability to manage profound emotional depth, and, as her pictures in the middle of 2015 varied in complexity, The Danish Girl drove home her credibility as one of Hollywood’s standout performers.