Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the
Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize an
actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the
film industry. Prior to the
49th Academy Awards ceremony (
1977), this award was simply known as the Academy Award of Merit for Performance by an Actor. Since its inception, however, the award has commonly been referred to as the Oscar for Best Actor. While actors are nominated for this award by Academy members who are actors and actresses themselves, winners are selected by the Academy membership as a whole.
History
Throughout the past 81 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, AMPAS has presented a total of 82 Best Actor awards to 73 different actors. Winners of this Academy Award of Merit receive the familiar Oscar statuette, depicting a gold-plated knight holding a crusader's sword and standing on a reel of film. The first recipient was
Emil Jannings, who was honored at the
1st Academy Awards ceremony (
1929) for his performances in
The Last Command and
The Way of All Flesh. The most recent recipient was
Sean Penn, who was honored at the
81st Academy Awards ceremony (
2009) for his performance as history-making politician
Harvey Milk in
Milk.
In the first three years of the Academy Awards, individuals such as actors and directors were nominated as the best 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. However, during the
3rd Academy Awards ceremony (
1930), only one of those films was cited in each winner's final award, even though each of the acting winners had had two films following their names on the ballots. For the
4th Academy Awards ceremony (
1931), this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actor is nominated for a specific performance in a single film. Such nominations are limited to five per year. Until the
8th Academy Awards ceremony (
1936), nominations for the Best Actor award were intended to include all actors, whether the performance was in either a leading or supporting role. At the
9th Academy Awards ceremony (
1937), however, the
Best Supporting Actor category was specifically introduced as a distinct award following complaints that the single Best Actor category necessarily favored leading performers with the most screen time. Nonetheless,
Lionel Barrymore had received a Best Actor award (
A Free Soul,
1931) and
Franchot Tone a Best Actor nomination (
Mutiny on the Bounty,
1936) for their performances in clear supporting roles. Currently, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role,
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role,
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role constitute the four Academy Awards of Merit for acting annually presented by AMPAS.
Other awards for acting
Actors have also received special awards, or
Academy Honorary Awards, for acting in specific films (such as in the case of
James Baskett, who received a special honorary award for Disney's
Song of the South). Child actors have also been awarded the
Academy Juvenile Award.
Superlatives
Nine men have won the Best Actor award twice. In chronological order, they are:
Spencer Tracy (1937, 1938),
Fredric March (1932, 1946),
Gary Cooper (1941, 1952),
Marlon Brando (1954, 1972),
Dustin Hoffman (1979, 1988),
Tom Hanks (1993, 1994),
Jack Nicholson (1975, 1997),
Daniel Day-Lewis (1989, 2007), and
Sean Penn (2003, 2008). Of these, all were Americans except for Daniel Day-Lewis. Tracy and Hanks were the only actors to win their awards in consecutive years. Furthermore, Tracy and Hanks were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the second.
The actors with the most nominations in this category are
Spencer Tracy and
Laurence Olivier, with nine each.
Paul Newman,
Jack Nicholson, and
Peter O'Toole tie for third place with eight nominations each. Nicholson won his awards a record 22 years apart. O'Toole holds the record for the longest time span between his first and last nominations (44 years), and he also holds the record for the greatest number of nominations without ever winning the award (eight).
Six actors have won both the Best Actor and the
Best Supporting Actor awards:
Jack Lemmon,
Robert De Niro,
Jack Nicholson,
Gene Hackman,
Kevin Spacey, and
Denzel Washington.
Two actors have won an Academy Award (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor) for portraying the same character, that of Don Vito Corleone in
The Godfather and
The Godfather Part II, respectively. The actors were
Marlon Brando and
Robert De Niro.
There has been only one announced tie in the history of this category. In 1932,
Fredric March received one more vote than
Wallace Beery. Academy rules at that time considered such a close margin to be a tie, so both March and Beery received the award. Under the current Academy rules, however, dual awards are only given for exact ties. While that has never happened for the Best Actor award, it did happen for the
Best Actress award in 1969.
Peter Finch is the only
posthumous winner of the Best Actor award, though he was alive when his nomination was announced (the only other posthumous winner in any acting category was another
Australian,
Heath Ledger, who won the
Best Supporting Actor award in 2009). The only posthumously nominated performers in this category were
James Dean,
Spencer Tracy, and
Massimo Troisi. Dean was posthumously nominated twice.
Three actors have been nominated for Best Actor more than once for the same character:
Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley in
Going My Way and
The Bells of St. Mary's;
Peter O'Toole as
King Henry II in
Becket and
The Lion in Winter; and
Paul Newman as "Fast Eddie" Felson in
The Hustler and
The Color of Money. (
Al Pacino was nominated in 1975 for a role for which he had previously been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Michael Corleone, in
The Godfather Part II.)
Michael Douglas (1988,
Wall Street) and
Laurence Olivier (1949,
Hamlet) are the only two actors to win the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Picture (Douglas as a producer of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976, and Olivier as producer of
Hamlet). Olivier is also the only actor to win for acting and producing in the same year. Other Oscar nominees for Best Actor and Best Picture are:
Clint Eastwood (acting nominations for
Unforgiven, 1993, and
Million Dollar Baby, 2005, winner for both in the Best Picture category);
Kevin Costner, Best Actor nominee for
Dances with Wolves and winning producer for the same film, in 1991; Paul Newman, Best Actor winner for
The Color of Money and a Best Picture nominee for
Rachel, Rachel in 1969; and Henry Fonda, Best Actor winner for
On Golden Pond and a Best Picture nominee for
12 Angry Men in 1958.
Barry Fitzgerald is the only actor to be nominated for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for the same character in the same year (as Father Fitzgibbon for
Going My Way. Afterward, the rules were changed to disallow this.
Several pairs of actors have been nominated for playing the same character or historical figure:
Fredric March and
James Mason as Norman Maine in
1937's A Star Is Born and
the 1954 version,
Robert Donat and
Peter O'Toole as Chipping in
1939's Goodbye, Mr. Chips and
the 1969 version,
Laurence Olivier and
Kenneth Branagh as
Henry V in
1944's Henry V and
the 1989 version (both of which were directed by their stars),
Charles Laughton and
Richard Burton as
Henry VIII in
The Private Life of Henry VIII and
Anne of the Thousand Days,
Leslie Howard and
Rex Harrison as
Professor Henry Higgins in
Pygmalion and
My Fair Lady,
José Ferrer and
Gerard Depardieu as
Cyrano de Bergerac in
1950's Cyrano de Bergerac and
the 1990 version,
Robert Montgomery and
Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton in
Here Comes Mr. Jordan and
Heaven Can Wait, and
Anthony Hopkins and
Frank Langella as
Richard Nixon in
Nixon and
Frost/Nixon.
Robert De Niro won
Best Supporting Actor for playing
Vito Corleone in
The Godfather Part II, the role for which
Marlon Brando had previously won Best Actor.
Laurence Olivier is the only actor to have won an Oscar for a
Shakespearean performance: Best Actor for
Hamlet (1948). Olivier also received an
Academy Honorary Award for
Henry V (1944), which Olivier described as a "fub-off".
Robert Downey, Jr. is the only actor nominated for playing a previous nominee,
Charles Chaplin, in
Chaplin.
Two actors directed their own Oscar-winning performances:
Laurence Olivier in
Hamlet and Roberto Benigni in
Life Is Beautiful. To date, however, no individual has won both Best Actor and Best Director.
Two winners have declined the award:
George C. Scott, who won for
Patton in 1971 (he had also declined his 1962 nomination for Best Supporting Actor for
The Hustler); and
Marlon Brando, upon winning his second Oscar for
The Godfather in 1973.
A few early winning and nominated performances have subsequently been
lost, including
Emil Jannings in
The Way of All Flesh (1928),
Lewis Stone in
The Patriot (1928), and
Lawrence Tibbett in
The Rogue Song (1930), of which only a short fragment and the soundtrack survives.
The earliest nominee in this category who is still alive is
Jackie Cooper (1931), followed by
Mickey Rooney (1940). The earliest winner in this category who is still alive is
Ernest Borgnine (1956), followed by
Maximilian Schell (1962)—both won over
Spencer Tracy and starred in the films for which Tracy was nominated. The few remaining living nominees from the 1940s–50s Hollywood era include
Kirk Douglas (3 nominations),
Tony Curtis, and
Richard Todd (1 each).
Sidney Poitier also received his first nomination in 1958 with Curtis.
The distance of the two-time winners are
Spencer Tracy (1 year),
Tom Hanks (1 year),
Sean Penn (5 years),
Dustin Hoffman (9 years),
Gary Cooper (11 years),
Fredric March (14 years),
Marlon Brando (18 years),
Daniel Day-Lewis (18 years), and
Jack Nicholson (22 years).
Multiple nominations
The following actors have received multiple Best Actor nominations. The list is sorted by the number of total awards (with the number of total nominations listed in parentheses).
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Life expectancy of winners
In 2001 Donald A. Redelmeier,
MD, and Sheldon M. Singh,
BSc published a study in the
Annals of Internal Medicine in which they found:
"Winning an Academy Award was associated with a large gain in life expectancy for actors and actresses...Winning an Academy Award can increase a performer’s stature and may add to their longevity. The absolute difference in life expectancy is about equal to the societal consequence of curing all cancers in all people for all time (22, 23). Moreover, movie stars who have won multiple Academy Awards have a survival advantage of 6.0 years (CI, 0.7 to 11.3 years) over performers with multiple films but no victories. Formal education is not the only way to improve health, and strict poverty is not the only way to worsen health. The main implication is that higher status may be linked to lower mortality rates even at very impressive levels of achievement."
The aforementioned authors did an update to 29 March 2006 in which they found 122 more individuals and 144 more deaths since their first publication. Their unadjusted analysis showed a smaller survival advantage of 3.6 years for winners compared to their fellow nominees and costars in the films in which their performance garnered them their award.
However, in a 2006 published study by Marie-Pierre Sylvestre,
MSc, Ella Huszti,
MSc, and James A. Hanley,
PhD, the authors found:
"The statistical method used to derive this statistically significant difference gave winners an unfair advantage because it credited an Oscar winner's years of life before winning toward survival subsequent to winning. When the authors of the current article reanalyzed the data using methods that avoided this "immortal time" bias, the survival advantage was closer to 1 year and was not statistically significant. The bias in Redelmeier and Singh's study is not limited to longevity comparisons of persons who reach different ranks within their profession."
Winners and nominees
Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by year of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the film's year of release. For example, the Oscar for Best Actor of 1999 was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in
bold, followed by the other nominees.
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
International presence
As the
Academy Awards are based in the
United States and are centered on the
Hollywood film industry, the majority of Academy Award nominees have been
Americans. Nonetheless, there is significant international presence at the awards, as evidenced by the following list of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
- Australia: Peter Finch, Geoffrey Rush, Heath Ledger
- Austria: Maximilian Schell, Oskar Werner, Paul Muni
- The Bahamas: Sidney Poitier
- Canada: Ryan Gosling
- France: Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier, Gérard Depardieu
- Germany: Emil Jannings
- Ireland: Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Richard Harris, Barry Fitzgerald, Daniel Day-Lewis (Day-Lewis holds dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and currently resides in County Wicklow, Ireland.)
- Italy: Roberto Benigni, Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi, Giancarlo Giannini
- Mexico: Anthony Quinn
- New Zealand: Russell Crowe
- Puerto Rico: José Ferrer
- Spain: Javier Bardem
- United Kingdom: George Arliss, Ronald Colman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert Donat, Alec Guinness, Rex Harrison, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, Charles Laughton, Victor McLaglen, Ray Milland, David Niven, Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Peter Ustinov
At the
37th Academy Awards (
1965), for the first time in history, all four of the top acting honors were awarded to non-Americans:
Rex Harrison,
Julie Andrews,
Peter Ustinov, and
Lila Kedrova. This occurred for the second time at the
80th Academy Awards (
2008), when all four acting categories were similarly represented:
Daniel Day-Lewis,
Marion Cotillard,
Javier Bardem, and
Tilda Swinton.
See also
