Academy Award for Best Actor

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.
The Best Actor award has been presented 95 times, to 85 different actors. The first winner was Emil Jannings for his roles in The Last Command (1928) and The Way of All Flesh (1927). The most recent winner is Brendan Fraser for The Whale; he is the first Canadian actor to win this award. The record for most wins is three, held by Daniel Day-Lewis, while nine other actors have won twice. The record for most nominations is nine, jointly held by Spencer Tracy and Laurence Olivier. At the 5th Academy Awards, Fredric March finished one vote ahead of Wallace Beery; under the rules of the time, this meant both actors were awarded, in this category's only tie.
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.
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
The following individuals received two or more Best Actor awards:
The following individuals received three or more Best Actor nominations:
Age superlatives
Films with multiple Leading Actor nominations
Winners are in bold.
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone
Going My Way (1944) – Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald
From Here to Eternity (1953) – Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster
Giant (1956) – James Dean and Rock Hudson
The Defiant Ones (1958) – Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – Maximilian Schell and Spencer Tracy
Becket (1964) – Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole
Midnight Cowboy (1969) – Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight
Sleuth (1972) – Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier
Network (1976) – Peter Finch and William Holden
The Dresser (1983) – Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney
Amadeus (1984) – F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce
Multiple character nominations
Winners are in bold.
2 nominations
Arthur Chipping from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Robert Donat, 1939) & Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Peter O'Toole, 1969)
Cyrano de Bergerac from Cyrano de Bergerac (José Ferrer, 1950) & Cyrano de Bergerac (Gérard Depardieu, 1990)
Eddie "Fast Eddie" Felson from The Hustler (Paul Newman, 1961) & The Color of Money (Paul Newman, 1986)
Father Chuck O'Malley from Going My Way (Bing Crosby, 1944) & The Bells of St. Mary's (Bing Crosby, 1945)
Joe Pendleton from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Robert Montgomery, 1941) & Heaven Can Wait (Warren Beatty, 1978)
King Henry II from Becket (Peter O'Toole, 1964) & The Lion in Winter (Peter O'Toole, 1968)
King Henry V from Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1946) & Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989)
King Henry VIII from The Private Life of Henry VIII (Charles Laughton, 1933) & Anne of the Thousand Days (Richard Burton, 1969)
Norman Maine from A Star Is Born (Fredric March, 1937) & A Star Is Born (James Mason, 1954)
President Abraham Lincoln from Abe Lincoln in Illinois (Raymond Massey, 1940) & Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis, 2012)
President Richard Nixon from Nixon (Anthony Hopkins, 1995) & Frost/Nixon (Frank Langella, 2008)
Professor Henry Higgins from Pygmalion (Leslie Howard, 1938) & My Fair Lady (Rex Harrison, 1964)
Rooster Cogburn from True Grit (John Wayne, 1969) & True Grit (Jeff Bridges, 2010)
Vincent van Gogh from Lust for Life (Kirk Douglas, 1956) & At Eternity's Gate (Willem Dafoe, 2018)
See also
Academy Award for Best Actress
All Academy Award acting nominees
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Notes
A: According to longstanding Hollywood legend, reported by Susan Orlean, Rin Tin Tin actually received the most Best Actor votes, but the Academy (not wishing to give the first award to a dog) refactored the votes to ensure that Jannings won.
B:The Circus originally received three nominations: Best Director (Comedy Picture), Best Actor, and Best Writing (Original Story) for Charles Chaplin. However, the Academy subsequently decided to remove Chaplin's name from the competitive award categories and instead to confer upon him a Special Award "for acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus".
C: Rules at the time of the first three ceremonies allowed for a performer to receive a single nomination which could honor their work in more than one film. George Arliss, Maurice Chevalier, and Ronald Colman were all nominated for two different roles in the same category. Current Academy rules forbid this from happening. No official reason was ever given as to why Arliss won the award for only one of the two films he was listed for.
D: 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 rules, it is stipulated that a tie must result in the exact same number of votes.
E: As with the previous year, when the Academy relaxed the rules to allow write-in votes following the outcry over Bette Davis's snub for Of Human Bondage, the Academy permitted write-in votes this year as well. Thus, Paul Muni received a write-in nomination for his performance in Black Fury, and actually finished second in the votes. Although as with Davis the previous year, the Academy does not recognize these two as "official nominees", they are nevertheless listed on the official website amongst their respective years' nominations for posterity's sake.
F: Due to category confusion, Barry Fitzgerald received nominations (each for the same performance as Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way) in both the leading and supporting actor categories for 1944, winning the Oscar for the latter. As a result of this fiasco, the Academy amended its rules so that if any actor or actress received enough votes to land in the final five nominees for both again, they would only receive the nomination for the category in which they obtained the largest percentage of recognition.
References
Bibliography
External links
Oscars.org (official Academy site)
The Academy Awards Database (official site)
Oscar.com (official ceremony promotional site)
Academy Awards
Film awards for lead actor