# National Board of Review Award for Best Actor

The National Board of Review Award for Best Actor is one of the annual film awards given (since 1945) by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

## Winners
### 1940s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1945 | Ray Milland | The Lost Weekend | Don Birnam |
| 1946 | Laurence Olivier | Henry V | King Henry V |
| 1947 | Michael Redgrave | Mourning Becomes Electra | Orin Mannon |
| 1948 | Walter Huston | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre | Howard |
| 1949 | Ralph Richardson | The Fallen Idol | Baines |
| 1949 | Ralph Richardson | The Heiress | Austin Sloper |

### 1950s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1950 | Alec Guinness | Kind Hearts and Coronets | Various |
| 1951 | Richard Basehart | Fourteen Hours | Robert Cosick |
| 1952 | Ralph Richardson | Breaking the Sound Barrier | John Ridgefield |
| 1953 | James Mason | The Desert Rats | Field Marshal Erwin von Rommel |
| 1953 | James Mason | Face to Face | The Captain |
| 1953 | James Mason | Julius Caesar | Brutus |
| 1953 | James Mason | The Man Between | Ivo Kern |
| 1954 | Bing Crosby | The Country Girl | Frank Elgin |
| 1955 | Ernest Borgnine | Marty | Marty Piletti |
| 1956 | Yul Brynner | Anastasia | General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine |
| 1956 | Yul Brynner | The King and I | King Mongkut of Siam |
| 1956 | Yul Brynner | The Ten Commandments | Pharaoh Rameses II |
| 1957 | Alec Guinness | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson |
| 1958 | Spencer Tracy | The Old Man and the Sea | The Old Man / Narrator |
| 1959 | Victor Sjöström | Wild Strawberries | Professor Isak Borg |

### 1960s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1960 | Robert Mitchum | Home from the Hill | Wade Hunnicutt |
| 1960 | Robert Mitchum | The Sundowners | Paddy Carmody |
| 1961 | Albert Finney | Saturday Night and Sunday Morning | Arthur Seaton |
| 1962 | Jason Robards, Jr. | Long Day's Journey Into Night | James Tyrone, Jr. |
| 1962 | Jason Robards, Jr. | Tender Is the Night | Dick Diver |
| 1963 | Rex Harrison | Cleopatra | Julius Caesar |
| 1964 | Anthony Quinn | Zorba the Greek (Alexis Zorbas) | Alexis Zorba |
| 1965 | Lee Marvin | Cat Ballou | Kid Shelleen / Tim Strawn |
| 1965 | Lee Marvin | Ship of Fools | Bill Tenny |
| 1966 | Paul Scofield | A Man for All Seasons | Sir Thomas More |
| 1967 | Peter Finch | Far from the Madding Crowd | William Boldwood |
| 1968 | Cliff Robertson | Charly | Charly Gordon |
| 1969 | Peter O'Toole | Goodbye, Mr. Chips | Arthur Chipping, MA (Oxon), Latin Master |

### 1970s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1970 | George C. Scott | Patton | George S. Patton, Jr. |
| 1971 | Gene Hackman | The French Connection | Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle |
| 1972 | Peter O'Toole | Man of La Mancha | Don Quixote de La Mancha / Miguel de Cervantes / Alonso Quijana |
| 1972 | Peter O'Toole | The Ruling Class | Jack Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney |
| 1973 | Al Pacino | Serpico | Francesco "Frank" Serpico |
| 1973 | Robert Ryan | The Iceman Cometh | Larry Slade |
| 1974 | Gene Hackman | The Conversation | Harry Caul |
| 1975 | Jack Nicholson | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Randle "R.P." McMurphy |
| 1976 | David Carradine | Bound for Glory | Woodrow "Woody" Guthrie |
| 1977 | John Travolta | Saturday Night Fever | Anthony "Tony" Manero |
| 1978 | Jon Voight | Coming Home | Luke Martin |
| 1978 | Laurence Olivier | The Boys from Brazil | Ezra Lieberman |
| 1979 | Peter Sellers | Being There | Chance |

### 1980s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1980 | Robert De Niro | Raging Bull | Jake LaMotta |
| 1981 | Henry Fonda | On Golden Pond | Norman Thayer |
| 1982 | Ben Kingsley | Gandhi | Mahatma Gandhi |
| 1983 | Tom Conti | Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence | John Lawrence |
| 1983 | Tom Conti | Reuben, Reuben | Gowan McGland |
| 1984 | Victor Banerjee | A Passage to India | Dr. Aziz H. Ahmed |
| 1985 | William Hurt | Kiss of the Spider Woman | Luis Molina |
| 1985 | Raúl Juliá | Kiss of the Spider Woman | Valentin Arregui |
| 1986 | Paul Newman | The Color of Money | Fast Eddie Felson |
| 1987 | Michael Douglas | Wall Street | Gordon Gekko |
| 1988 | Gene Hackman | Mississippi Burning | Agent Rupert Anderson |
| 1989 | Morgan Freeman | Driving Miss Daisy | Hoke Colburn |

### 1990s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 1990 | Robert De Niro | Awakenings | Leonard Lowe |
| 1990 | Robin Williams | Awakenings | Dr. Malcolm Sayer |
| 1991 | Warren Beatty | Bugsy | Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel |
| 1992 | Jack Lemmon | Glengarry Glen Ross | Shelley "The Machine" Levene |
| 1993 | Anthony Hopkins | The Remains of the Day | James Stevens |
| 1993 | Anthony Hopkins | Shadowlands | Clive "C. S." Lewis |
| 1994 | Tom Hanks | Forrest Gump | Forrest Gump |
| 1995 | Nicolas Cage | Leaving Las Vegas | Ben Sanderson |
| 1996 | Tom Cruise | Jerry Maguire | Jerry Maguire |
| 1997 | Jack Nicholson | As Good as It Gets | Melvin Udall |
| 1998 | Ian McKellen | Gods and Monsters | James Whale |
| 1999 | Russell Crowe | The Insider | Dr. Jeffrey Wigand |

### 2000s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 2000 | Javier Bardem | Before Night Falls | Reinaldo Arenas |
| 2001 | Billy Bob Thornton | Bandits | Terry Lee Collins |
| 2001 | Billy Bob Thornton | The Man Who Wasn't There | Ed Crane |
| 2001 | Billy Bob Thornton | Monster's Ball | Hank Grotowski |
| 2002 | Campbell Scott | Roger Dodger | Roger Swanson |
| 2003 | Sean Penn | Mystic River | Jimmy Markum |
| 2004 | Jamie Foxx | Ray | Ray Charles |
| 2005 | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Capote | Truman Capote |
| 2006 | Forest Whitaker | The Last King of Scotland | Idi Amin |
| 2007 | George Clooney | Michael Clayton | Michael Clayton |
| 2008 | Clint Eastwood | Gran Torino | Walt Kowalski |
| 2009 | George Clooney | Up in the Air | Ryan Bingham |
| 2009 | Morgan Freeman | Invictus | Nelson Mandela |

### 2010s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 2010 | Jesse Eisenberg | The Social Network | Mark Zuckerberg |
| 2011 | George Clooney | The Descendants | Matt King |
| 2012 | Bradley Cooper | Silver Linings Playbook | Patrick "Pat" Solitano, Jr. |
| 2013 | Bruce Dern | Nebraska | Woodrow "Woody" Grant |
| 2014 | Oscar Isaac | A Most Violent Year | Abel Morales |
| 2014 | Michael Keaton | Birdman | Riggan Thomson |
| 2015 | Matt Damon | The Martian | Mark Watney |
| 2016 | Casey Affleck | Manchester by the Sea | Lee Chandler |
| 2017 | Tom Hanks | The Post | Ben Bradlee |
| 2018 | Viggo Mortensen | Green Book | Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga |
| 2019 | Adam Sandler | Uncut Gems | Howard Ratner |

### 2020s

| Year | Winner | Film | Role |
| 2020 | Riz Ahmed | Sound of Metal | Ruben Stone |
| 2021 | Will Smith | King Richard | Richard Williams |
| 2022 | Colin Farrell | The Banshees of Inisherin | Pádraic Súilleabháin |
| 2023 | Paul Giamatti | The Holdovers | Paul Hunham |
| 2024 | Daniel Craig | Queer | William Lee |