Academy Award for Best Actor

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The Academy Award for Best Actor is one of the awards given to male actors working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; nominations are made by Academy members who are actors and actresses. The winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole.[citation needed]

With two early exceptions, each year's prize is for an actor's performance in a single film. In 1928 and 1930, actors were able to be nominated for their work in more than one film.

Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by the years of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) in the year of release; for example, the Oscar for "Best Actor in 1999" was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees.

Seven 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) and Jack Nicholson (1975, 1997). Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks are the only ones to win their awards in consecutive years. No actor has won the award more than twice.

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 most years between his first and last nominations (44).

Six actors have won both this award and the award for Best Supporting Actor: Jack Lemmon, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey and Denzel Washington.

There was only one "tie" in the history of this category, and it wasn't really a tie. In 1932, Fredric March beat Wallace Beery by one vote; but Academy rules of the day treated such close margins as ties, so both received the award. Today, dual awards are only given for exact ties; that has never happened for Best Actor, though it did happen for Best Actress in 1968.

The youngest person to win this award is Adrien Brody in 2003, when he was 29 years and 343 days old; the oldest was Henry Fonda, who was 76 years and 317 days old. The youngest nominee is Jackie Cooper in 1931, when he was 9 years and 20 days old; the oldest nominee was Richard Farnsworth in 1999, who was 79 years and 167 days old.

Peter Finch is the only posthumous winner, and James Dean, Spencer Tracy and Massimo Troisi are the only other posthumously nominated performers in this category.

Two winners have declined the award:

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

See also

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