# Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play

The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play was an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre across collective Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. The award was one of eight new acting awards first presented in 1975, when Drama Desk retired an earlier award that had made no distinction between work in plays and musicals, nor between actors and actresses, nor between lead performers and featured performers.
After the 2022 ceremony, all eight acting categories introduced in 1975 were retired. The award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, along with Outstanding Actress in a Play, were replaced in 2023 with the gender neutral category of Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play.

## Winners and nominees
### 1970s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 1975 |
| 1975 | Anthony Hopkins | Equus | Dysart |
| 1975 | Roy Dotrice | Brief Lives | John Aubrey |
| 1975 | Peter Firth | Equus | Alan Strang |
| 1975 | Charles Grodin | Same Time, Next Year | George |
| 1975 | John Kani | Sizwe Banzi Is Dead | Styles / Buntu |
| 1975 | John Kani | The Island | John |
| 1975 | Alec McCowen | The Misanthrope | Alceste |
| 1975 | Richard Monette | Hosanna | Hosanna |
| 1975 | Tony Musante | P.S. Your Cat Is Dead | Vito |
| 1975 | Winston Ntshona | The Island | Winston |
| 1975 | Donald Sinden | London Assurance | Sir Harcourt Courtly |
| 1976 |
| 1976 | John Wood | Travesties | Henry Carr |
| 1976 | Peter Evans | Streamers | Richie |
| 1976 | Ben Gazzara | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | George |
| 1976 | Richard Kiley | The Heiress | Dr. Austin Sloper |
| 1976 | Frank Quinn | Lamppost Reunion | Mac |
| 1976 | Louis Zorich | They Knew What They Wanted | Tony |
| 1977 |
| 1977 | Al Pacino | The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel | Pavlo Hummel |
| 1977 | Martin Balsam | Cold Storage | Joseph Parmigian |
| 1977 | Richard Chamberlain | The Night of the Iguana | Rev. Shannon |
| 1977 | Tom Courtenay | Otherwise Engaged | Simon |
| 1977 | Robert Duvall | American Buffalo | Walter Cole |
| 1977 | Fred Gwynne | A Texas Trilogy | Colonel J. C. Kinkaid |
| 1977 | John Heard | G.R. Point | Micah |
| 1977 | Jonathan Pryce | Comedians | Gethin Price |
| 1978 |
| 1978 | Barnard Hughes | Da | Da |
| 1978 | Hume Cronyn | The Gin Game | Weller Martin |
| 1978 | Judd Hirsch | Chapter Two | George |
| 1978 | James Earl Jones | Paul Robeson | Paul Robeson |
| 1978 | Frank Langella | Dracula | Dracula |
| 1978 | Brian Murray | Da | Charlie Now |
| 1979 |
| 1979 | Philip Anglim | The Elephant Man | John Merrick |
| 1979 | Tom Aldredge | On Golden Pond | Norman Thayer Jr. |
| 1979 | Richard Chamberlain | Fathers and Sons | Wild Bill Hickok |
| 1979 | Tom Conti | Whose Life is It Anyway? | Ken Harrison |
| 1979 | Donal Donnelly | Faith Healer | Frank Hardy |
| 1979 | Jack Lemmon | Tribute | Scottie Templeton |

### 1980s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 1980 |
| 1980 | John Rubinstein | Children of a Lesser God | James Leeds |
| 1980 | F. Murray Abraham | Teibele and Her Demon | Alchonon |
| 1980 | Philip Bosco | Major Barbara | Andrew Undershaft |
| 1980 | Charles Brown | Home | Cephus Miles |
| 1980 | Gerald Hiken | Strider | Strider |
| 1980 | Judd Hirsch | Talley's Folly | Matt Friedman |
| 1981 |
| 1981 | Ian McKellen | Amadeus | Antonio Salieri |
| 1981 | Tim Curry | Amadeus | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
| 1981 | John Heard | The Chekhov Sketchbook | Various Characters |
| 1981 | Derek Jacobi | The Suicide | Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov |
| 1981 | Milo O'Shea | Mass Appeal | Tim Farley |
| 1981 | Remak Ramsay | The Winslow Boy | Sir Robert Morton |
| 1982 |
| 1982 | Christopher Plummer | Othello | Iago |
| 1982 | Bob Gunton | How I Got That Story | The Historical Event |
| 1982 | Zakes Mokae | "Master Harold"...and the Boys | Sam |
| 1982 | Paul Rogers | The Dresser | Sir |
| 1982 | Robert Stattel | King Lear | Edgar |
| 1983 |
| 1983 | Harvey Fierstein | Torch Song Trilogy | Arnold Beckoff |
| 1983 | Matthew Broderick | Torch Song Trilogy | David |
| 1983 | Jeff Daniels | Johnny Got His Gun | Joe Bonham |
| 1983 | John Malkovich | True West | Lee |
| 1983 | Remak Ramsay | Quartermaine's Terms | St. John Quartermaine |
| 1983 | John Rubinstein | The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial | Barney Greenwald |
| 1983 | James Russo | Extremities | Raul |
| 1984 |
| 1984 | Dustin Hoffman | Death of a Salesman | Willy Loman |
| 1984 | Rex Harrison | Heartbreak House | Captain Shotover |
| 1984 | Jeremy Irons | The Real Thing | Henry |
| 1984 | David McCallum | The Philanthropist | Philip |
| 1984 | Donald Moffat | Play Memory | Cam MacMillan |
| 1984 | Al Pacino | American Buffalo | Walter Cole |
| 1985 |
| 1985 | John Lithgow | Requiem for a Heavyweight | Harlan "Mountain" McClintock |
| 1985 | Jim Dale | A Day in the Death of Joe Egg | Bri |
| 1985 | Anthony Heald | Digby | Digby Merton |
| 1985 | Anthony Heald | The Foreigner | Charlie |
| 1985 | Jonathan Hogan | As Is | Rich |
| 1985 | Derek Jacobi | Cyrano de Bergerac | Cyrano de Bergerac |
| 1985 | Derek Jacobi | Much Ado About Nothing | Benedick |
| 1985 | Patrick McGoohan | Pack of Lies | Stewart |
| 1985 | Jonathan Pryce | Accidental Death of an Anarchist | The Fool |
| 1986 |
| 1986 | Ed Harris | Precious Sons | Fred |
| 1986 | Jeff Daniels | Lemon Sky | Alan |
| 1986 | Kevin Kline | Hamlet | Prince Hamlet |
| 1986 | Jack Lemmon | Long Day's Journey into Night | James Tyrone, Sr. |
| 1986 | John Mahoney | The House of Blue Leaves | Artie Shaughnessy |
| 1986 | Roshan Seth | A Map of the World | Victor Mehta |
| 1987 |
| 1987 | James Earl Jones | Fences | Troy Maxson |
| 1987 | Don Bloomfield | Lily Dale | Horace Robedaux |
| 1987 | Morgan Freeman | Driving Miss Daisy | Hoke Coleburn |
| 1987 | Victor Garber | You Never Can Tell | Dr. Valentine |
| 1987 | Ian McKellen | Wild Honey | Mikhail Platonov |
| 1987 | Alan Rickman | Les Liaisons Dangereuses | Le Vicomte de Valmont |
| 1988 |
| 1988 | Ron Silver | Speed-the-Plow | Charlie Fox |
| 1988 | Derek Jacobi | Breaking the Code | Alan Turing |
| 1988 | Delroy Lindo | Joe Turner's Come and Gone | Herald Loomis |
| 1988 | John Lithgow | M. Butterfly | Rene Gallimard |
| 1988 | John Malkovich | Burn This | Pale |
| 1988 | Joe Mantegna | Speed-the-Plow | Gould |
| 1989 |
| 1989 | Philip Bosco | Lend Me a Tenor | Saunders |
| 1989 | Mikhail Baryshnikov | Metamorphosis | Gregor Samsa |
| 1989 | Niall Buggy | Aristocrats | Casimir |
| 1989 | Peter Friedman | The Heidi Chronicles | Scoop |
| 1989 | John Kavanagh | Juno and the Paycock | Joxer Daly |
| 1989 | Stephen McHattie | Ghetto | Kittel |
| 1989 | Paul Provenza | Only Kidding! | Jerry Goldstein |

### 1990s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 1990 |
| 1990 | Nathan Lane | The Lisbon Traviata | Mendy |
| 1990 | Alec Baldwin | Prelude to a Kiss | Peter Hoskins |
| 1990 | Charles S. Dutton | The Piano Lesson | Boy Willie |
| 1990 | Gary Sinise | The Grapes of Wrath | Tom Joad |
| 1990 | Colin Stinton | Some Americans Abroad | Joe Taylor |
| 1991 |
| 1991 | Ron Rifkin | The Substance of Fire | Isaac Geldhart |
| 1991 | Kevin Kline | Hamlet | Prince Hamlet |
| 1991 | Tom McGowan | La Bête | Valere |
| 1991 | Sab Shimono | The Wash | Sadao |
| 1992 |
| 1992 | Brian Bedford | Two Shakespearean Actors | William Charles Macready |
| 1992 | F. Murray Abraham | A Life in the Theatre | Robert |
| 1992 | Dennis Boutsikaris | Sight Unseen | Jonathan |
| 1992 | James McDaniel | Before it Hits Home | Wendall |
| 1992 | Brian Murray | A Small Family Business | Jack McCracken |
| 1993 |
| 1993 | Ron Leibman | Angels in America | Roy Cohn, et al. |
| 1993 | John Cameron Mitchell | The Destiny of Me | Alexander |
| 1993 | Denis O'Hare | Hauptmann | Richard Hauptmann |
| 1993 | Everett Quinton | Brother Truckers | Lyla Balskin |
| 1993 | Ron Rifkin | Three Hotels | Kenneth Hoyle |
| 1994 |
| 1994 | Brian Bedford | Timon of Athens | Timon |
| 1994 | Stacy Keach | The Kentucky Cycle | Various Characters |
| 1994 | Christopher Plummer | No Man's Land | Spooner |
| 1994 | Stephen Spinella | Angels in America: Perestroika | Prior Walter |
| 1994 | Sam Waterston | Abe Lincoln in Illinois | Abraham Lincoln |
| 1995 |
| 1995 | Ralph Fiennes | Hamlet | Prince Hamlet |
| 1995 | Tom Aldredge | Incommunicado | Ezra Pound |
| 1995 | Philip Bosco | The Heiress | Dr. Austin Sloper |
| 1995 | Philip Goodwin | Henry VI | Henry VI of England |
| 1995 | Ron Leibman | The Merchant of Venice | Shylock |
| 1995 | Roger Rees | Indiscretions | George |
| 1996 |
| 1996 | Frank Langella | The Father | The Captain |
| 1996 | Gerry Bamman | Nixon's Nixon | Richard M. Nixon |
| 1996 | George Grizzard | A Delicate Balance | Tobias |
| 1996 | Mark Nelson | Picasso at the Lapin Agile | Albert Einstein |
| 1996 | Rocco Sisto | Quills | The Marquis |
| 1996 | Patrick Stewart | The Tempest | Prospero |
| 1997 |
| 1997 | David Morse | How I Learned to Drive | Uncle Peck |
| 1997 | Christopher Plummer | Barrymore | John Barrymore |
| 1997 | Michael Gambon | Skylight | Tom Sergeant |
| 1997 | Frank Langella | Present Laughter | Garry |
| 1997 | Daniel Massey | Taking Sides | Wilhelm Furtwängler |
| 1997 | Donal McCann | The Steward of Christendom | Thomas Dunne |
| 1998 |
| 1998 | Anthony LaPaglia | A View from the Bridge | Eddie Carbone |
| 1998 | Jason Bowcutt | Never the Sinner | Nathan Leopold |
| 1998 | Richard Briers | The Chairs | Old Man |
| 1998 | Brian Cox | St. Nicholas | Performer |
| 1998 | John Slattery | Three Days of Rain | Walker |
| 1998 | Eli Wallach | Visiting Mr. Green | Mr. Green |
| 1999 |
| 1999 | Brian Dennehy | Death of a Salesman | Willy Loman |
| 1999 | Scott Glenn | Killer Joe | Killer Joe Cooper |
| 1999 | Finbar Lynch | Not About Nightingales | Canary Jim |
| 1999 | Corin Redgrave | Not About Nightingales | Bert "Boss" Whalen |
| 1999 | Toby Stephens | Ring Round the Moon | Hugo / Frederick |
| 1999 | Patrick Stewart | The Ride Down Mt. Morgan | Lyman Felt |

### 2000s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 2000 |
| 2000 | Stephen Dillane | The Real Thing | Henry |
| 2000 | Gabriel Byrne | A Moon for the Misbegotten | James Tyrone, Jr. |
| 2000 | Kevin Chamberlin | Dirty Blonde | Charlie |
| 2000 | Philip Seymour Hoffman | True West | Austin (Alternated with Lee) |
| 2000 | Derek Jacobi | Uncle Vanya | Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky |
| 2000 | Paul Sparks | Coyote on a Fence | Robert Alvin "Bobby" Reyburn |
| 2001 |
| 2001 | Richard Easton | The Invention of Love | A.E. Housman |
| 2001 | Alan Bates | The Unexpected Man | The Man |
| 2001 | Ralph Fiennes | Richard II | Richard II of England |
| 2001 | Brian Stokes Mitchell | King Hedley II | King |
| 2001 | John Ortiz | Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train | Angel Cruz |
| 2001 | Liev Schreiber | Betrayal | Jerry |
| 2002 |
| 2002 | Alan Bates | Fortune's Fool | Vassily Semyonitch Kuzovkin |
| 2002 | Liam Neeson | The Crucible | John Proctor |
| 2002 | Bill Pullman | The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? | Martin Gray |
| 2002 | Alan Rickman | Private Lives | Elyot Chase |
| 2002 | Dallas Roberts | Nocturne | The Son |
| 2002 | Jeffrey Wright | Topdog/Underdog | Lincoln |
| 2003 |
| 2003 | Eddie Izzard | A Day in the Death of Joe Egg | Bri |
| 2003 | Simon Russell Beale | Uncle Vanya | Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky |
| 2003 | Norbert Leo Butz | Buicks | Bill |
| 2003 | Jim Dale | Comedians | Eddie Waters |
| 2003 | Brian Dennehy | Long Day's Journey into Night | James Tyrone, Sr. |
| 2003 | Daniel Sunjata | Take Me Out | Darren Lemming |
| 2004 |
| 2004 | Kevin Kline | Henry IV | Sir John Falstaff |
| 2004 | John Michael Higgins | Big Bill | Bill Tilden |
| 2004 | Frank Langella | Match | Tobi |
| 2004 | Brían F. O'Byrne | Frozen | Ralph |
| 2004 | Christopher Plummer | King Lear | King Lear |
| 2004 | Paul Sparks | Blackbird | Baylis |
| 2005 |
| 2005 | Brían F. O'Byrne | Doubt | Father Flynn |
| 2005 | Adam Arkin | Brooklyn Boy | Eric Weiss |
| 2005 | John Cullum | Sin (A Cardinal Deposed) | Cardinal Bernard Law |
| 2005 | Bill Irwin | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | George |
| 2005 | Jeremy Piven | Fat Pig | Tom |
| 2005 | John Turturro | Souls of Naples | Pasquale |
| 2006 |
| 2006 | Richard Griffiths | The History Boys | Hector |
| 2006 | Vince Gatton | Candy & Dorothy | Candy |
| 2006 | John Glover | The Paris Letter | Anton Kilgallen |
| 2006 | Željko Ivanek | The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial | Lt. Com. Phillip Francis Queeg |
| 2006 | Nathan Lane | Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams | Lou Nuncle |
| 2006 | Brían F. O'Byrne | Shining City | Ian |
| 2007 |
| 2007 | Frank Langella | Frost/Nixon | Richard Nixon |
| 2007 | Brían F. O'Byrne | The Coast of Utopia: Voyage | Alexander Herzen |
| 2007 | Christopher Plummer | Inherit the Wind | Henry Drummond |
| 2007 | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Jack Goes Boating | Jack |
| 2007 | Liev Schreiber | Talk Radio | Barry Champlain |
| 2007 | Kevin Spacey | A Moon for the Misbegotten | James Tyrone, Jr. |
| 2007 | Paul Sparks | Essential Self-Defense | Yul Carroll |
| 2008 |
| 2008 | Mark Rylance | Boeing-Boeing | Robert |
| 2008 | Bill Champion | Intimate Exchanges | Toby |
| 2008 | Kevin Kline | Cyrano de Bergerac | Cyrano de Bergerac |
| 2008 | Bill Pullman | Peter & Jerry | Peter |
| 2008 | Tobias Segal | From Up Here | Kenny Barrett |
| 2008 | Rufus Sewell | Rock 'n' Roll | Jan |
| 2009 |
| 2009 | Geoffrey Rush | Exit the King | King Berenger |
| 2009 | Simon Russell Beale | The Winter's Tale | Leontes |
| 2009 | Reed Birney | Blasted | Ian |
| 2009 | Raúl Esparza | Speed-the-Plow | Charlie Fox |
| 2009 | Bill Irwin | Waiting for Godot | Lucky |
| 2009 | Daniel Radcliffe | Equus | Alan Strang |
| 2009 | Thomas Sadoski | reasons to be pretty | Greg |

### 2010s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 2010 |
| 2010 | Liev Schreiber | A View from the Bridge | Eddie Carbone |
| 2010 | Bill Heck | The Orphans' Home Cycle | Various Characters |
| 2010 | Jude Law | Hamlet | Hamlet |
| 2010 | Alfred Molina | Red | Mark Rothko |
| 2010 | Eddie Redmayne | Red | Ken |
| 2010 | John Douglas Thompson | The Emperor Jones | Jones |
| 2010 | Christopher Walken | A Behanding in Spokane | Carmichael |
| 2011 |
| 2011 | Bobby Cannavale | The Motherfucker With the Hat | Jackie |
| 2011 | Charles Busch | The Divine Sister | Mother Superior |
| 2011 | Al Pacino | The Merchant of Venice | Shylock |
| 2011 | Geoffrey Rush | The Diary of a Madman | Poprishchin |
| 2011 | Mark Rylance | Jerusalem | Johnny "Rooster" Byron |
| 2011 | Michael Shannon | Mistakes Were Made | Felix Artifex |
| 2011 | Paul Sparks | Dusk Rings a Bell | Ray |
| 2012 |
| 2012 | James Corden | One Man, Two Guvnors | Francis Henshall |
| 2012 | Hugh Dancy | Venus in Fur | Thomas |
| 2012 | Claybourne Elder | One Arm | Ollie |
| 2012 | Santino Fontana | Sons of the Prophet | Joseph |
| 2012 | Joseph Franchini | The Navigator | Dave |
| 2012 | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Death of a Salesman | Willy Loman |
| 2012 | Kevin Spacey | Richard III | Richard III of England |
| 2013 | |
| 2013 | Tracy Letts | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | George |
| 2013 | Reed Birney | Uncle Vanya | Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky |
| 2013 | Daniel Everidge | Falling | Performer |
| 2013 | Tom Hanks | Lucky Guy | Mike McAlary |
| 2013 | Shuler Hensley | The Whale | Charlie |
| 2013 | Nathan Lane | The Nance | Chauncey |
| 2014 |
| 2014 | Bryan Cranston | All the Way | President Lyndon B. Johnson |
| 2014 | Hamish Linklater | The Comedy of Errors | Antipholus |
| 2014 | Ian McKellen | No Man's Land | Spooner |
| 2014 | David Morse | The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin | Tom Durnin |
| 2014 | Chris O'Dowd | Of Mice and Men | Lennie Small |
| 2014 | Daniel Radcliffe | The Cripple of Inishmaan | Cripple Billy |
| 2014 | Denzel Washington | A Raisin in the Sun | Walter Lee Younger |
| 2015 |
| 2015 | Alex Sharp | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Christopher Boone |
| 2015 | Reed Birney | I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard | David |
| 2015 | Bradley Cooper | The Elephant Man | John Merrick |
| 2015 | Stephen McKinley Henderson | Between Riverside and Crazy | Walter 'Pops' Washington |
| 2015 | Ben Miles | Wolf Hall Parts One & Two | Thomas Cromwell |
| 2015 | Bill Pullman | Sticks and Bones | David |
| 2016 |
| 2016 | Frank Langella | The Father | André |
| 2016 | Andrew Garman | The Christians | Pastor Paul |
| 2016 | Avi Hoffman | Death of a Salesman | Willy Loman |
| 2016 | Tim Pigott-Smith | King Charles III | Charles, Prince of Wales |
| 2016 | Mark Strong | A View from the Bridge | Eddie Carbone |
| 2017 |
| 2017 | Kevin Kline | Present Laughter | Garry Essendine |
| 2017 | Bobby Cannavale | The Hairy Ape | Robert "Yank" Smith |
| 2017 | Daniel Craig | Othello | Iago |
| 2017 | David Hyde Pierce | A Life | Nate Martin |
| 2017 | John Douglas Thompson | Jitney | Jim Becker |
| 2018 |
| 2018 | Andrew Garfield | Angels in America | Prior Walter |
| 2018 | Johnny Flynn | Hangmen | Mooney |
| 2018 | Tom Hollander | Travesties | Henry Carr |
| 2018 | James McArdle | Angels in America | Louis Ironson |
| 2018 | Paul Sparks | Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo | Jerry |
| 2019 |
| 2019 | Jay O. Sanders | Uncle Vanya | Vanya |
| 2019 | Jeff Biehl | Life Sucks | Vanya |
| 2019 | Edmund Donovan | Lewiston/Clarkston | Chris |
| 2019 | Raúl Esparza | The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui | Arturo Ui |
| 2019 | Russell Harvard | I Was Most Alive With You | Knox |

### 2020s

| Year | Actor | Play | Character |
| 2020 |
| 2020 | Edmund Donovan | Greater Clements | Joe |
| 2020 | Charles Busch | The Confession of Lily Dare | Lily Dare |
| 2020 | Raúl Esparza | Seared | Harry |
| 2020 | Francis Jue | Cambodian Rock Band | Duch |
| 2020 | Triney Sandoval | 72 Miles to Go... | Billy |
| 2020 | Kyle Soller | The Inheritance | Eric Glass |
| 2021 | No awards: New York theatres shuttered, March 2020 to September 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City | No awards: New York theatres shuttered, March 2020 to September 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City | No awards: New York theatres shuttered, March 2020 to September 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City |
| 2022 |
| 2022 | Ruben Santiago-Hudson | Lackawanna Blues | Various |
| 2022 | Brandon J. Dirden | Skeleton Crew | Reggie |
| 2022 | Jesse Tyler Ferguson | Take Me Out | Mason Marzac |
| 2022 | Jacob Ming-Trent | Merry Wives | Falstaff |
| 2022 | John Douglas Thompson | The Merchant of Venice | Shylock |

## Multiple wins
### 3 wins

* Frank Langella

### 2 wins

* Brian Bedford
* Kevin Kline
* Christopher Plummer