Academy Award for Best Actor

The Academy Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 1st Academy Awards to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actress winner. However, in recent years, it has shifted towards being presented by previous years’ Best Actor winners instead.

The Best Actor award has been presented 97 times, to 86 actors. The first winner was German actor Emil Jannings for his roles in The Last Command (1928) and The Way of All Flesh (1927). The most recent winner is Adrien Brody for The Brutalist (2024); he previously won the award for The Pianist (2002) at the age of 29, making him the category's youngest winner. The record for most wins is three, held by Daniel Day-Lewis, and ten other actors have won twice. The record for most nominations is nine, held jointly by Spencer Tracy and Laurence Olivier. At the 5th Academy Awards in 1932, Fredric March finished one vote ahead of Wallace Beery; under the rules of the time this resulted in them sharing the award, the only time this has occurred.

Nominations process

Nominees are currently determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy.

In the first three years of the awards, actors and actresses were nominated as the best individuals in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. Despite this, at the 3rd Academy Awards, held in 1930, only one film was cited in each winner's award regardless of how many they were eligible to be considered for during that span. The current system, in which an actor is nominated for a specific performance in a single film, was introduced for the 4th Academy Awards. Starting with the 9th Academy Awards, held in 1937, the category was limited to a maximum five nominations per year.

Emil Jannings was the inaugural winner, for two films: The Last Command (1928) and The Way of All Flesh (1927).
Warner Baxter won for In Old Arizona (1928).
George Arliss won for Disraeli (1929).
Lionel Barrymore won for A Free Soul (1931).
Fredric March won twice, for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Wallace Beery won for The Champ (1931), in a tie with Fredric March.
Charles Laughton won for The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).
Clark Gable won for It Happened One Night (1934).
Victor McLaglen won for The Informer (1935).
Paul Muni won for The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936).
Spencer Tracy was the first actor to consecutively win twice, for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938).
Robert Donat won for Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
James Stewart won for The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Gary Cooper won twice, for Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952).
James Cagney won for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
Paul Lukas won for Watch on the Rhine (1943).
Bing Crosby won for Going My Way (1944).
Ray Milland won for The Lost Weekend (1945).
Ronald Colman won for A Double Life (1947).
Laurence Olivier won for Hamlet (1948); first self-directed win (and simultaneous Best Picture).
Broderick Crawford won for All the King's Men (1949).
José Ferrer won for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950); Tony winner for the same role–first to accomplish this and the category's first latino winner.
Humphrey Bogart won for The African Queen (1951).
William Holden won for Stalag 17 (1953).
Marlon Brando won twice, for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Godfather (1972).
Ernest Borgnine won for Marty (1955).
Yul Brynner won for The King and I (1956); first Asian winner in category.
Alec Guinness won for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
David Niven won for Separate Tables (1958).
Charlton Heston won for Ben-Hur (1959).
Burt Lancaster won for Elmer Gantry (1960).
Maximilian Schell won for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Gregory Peck won for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
Sidney Poitier won for Lilies of the Field (1963); first black actor to win.
Rex Harrison won for My Fair Lady (1964).
Lee Marvin won for playing dual roles in Cat Ballou (1965).
Paul Scofield won for A Man for All Seasons (1966).
Rod Steiger won for In the Heat of the Night (1967).
Cliff Robertson won for CHAЯLY (1968).
John Wayne won for True Grit (1969).
George C. Scott won for Patton (1970).
Gene Hackman won for The French Connection (1971).
Jack Lemmon won for Save the Tiger (1973).
Art Carney won for Harry and Tonto (1974).
Jack Nicholson won twice, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and As Good as It Gets (1997).
Peter Finch won for Network (1976); first actor to win posthumously.
Richard Dreyfuss won for The Goodbye Girl (1977).
Jon Voight won for Coming Home (1978).
Dustin Hoffman won twice, for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988).
Robert De Niro won for Raging Bull (1980).
Henry Fonda won for On Golden Pond (1981)
Ben Kingsley won for Gandhi (1982).
Robert Duvall won for Tender Mercies (1983).
F. Murray Abraham won for Amadeus (1984).
William Hurt won for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).
Paul Newman won for The Color of Money (1986).
Michael Douglas won for Wall Street (1987).
Daniel Day-Lewis won thrice, for My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012).
Jeremy Irons won for Reversal of Fortune (1990).
Anthony Hopkins won twice, for The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and The Father (2020)—the latter rendering him the overall oldest acting winner, at age 83.
Al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman (1992).
Tom Hanks won twice consecutively, for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).
Nicolas Cage won for Leaving Las Vegas (1995).
Geoffrey Rush won for Shine (1996).
Roberto Benigni won for Life Is Beautiful (1997); first Italian-spoken role to win for the category.
Kevin Spacey won for American Beauty (1999).
Russell Crowe won for Gladiator (2000).
Denzel Washington won for Training Day (2001).
Sean Penn won twice, for Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008).
Jamie Foxx won for Ray (2004).
Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote (2005).
Forest Whitaker won for The Last King of Scotland (2006).
Jeff Bridges won for Crazy Heart (2009).
Colin Firth won for The King's Speech (2010).
Jean Dujardin won for The Artist (2011).
Matthew McConaughey won for Dallas Buyers Club (2013).
Eddie Redmayne won for The Theory of Everything (2014).
Leonardo DiCaprio won for The Revenant (2015).
Casey Affleck won for Manchester by the Sea (2016).
Gary Oldman won for Darkest Hour (2017).
Rami Malek won for Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).
Joaquin Phoenix won for Joker (2019).
Will Smith won for King Richard (2021).
Brendan Fraser won for The Whale (2022).
Cillian Murphy won for Oppenheimer (2023).

Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months, from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple awards and nominations

See also: List of superlative Academy Award winners and nominees § Best Actor in a Leading Role

The following individuals received two or more Best Actor awards:

The following individuals received three or more Best Actor nominations:

Age superlatives

Main article: List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees § Best Actor in a Leading Role

Films with multiple Leading Actor nominations

Winners are in bold.

Multiple character nominations

The following were nominated for their portrayals of the same fictional or non-fictional character in separate films (including variations of the original).

Winners are in bold.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

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