Academy Award for Best Actor - Americola, the celebrity encyclopedia 
Academy Award for Best Actor
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The Academy Award for Best Actor is one of the awards given to 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.
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 timespan 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 (8).
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 ever to win this award is Adrien Brody, who was 29 years old when he won for The Pianist (2002). The oldest person ever to win this award is Henry Fonda, who was 76 years old when he won for On Golden Pond (1981). The youngest person ever to be nominated for this award is Jackie Cooper, who was 9 years old when he was nominated for Skippy (1930/31). The oldest person ever to be nominated for this award is Richard Farnsworth, who was 79 years old when he was nominated for The Straight Story (1999).
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: George C Scott, who won for Patton in 1970 (he had also declined his 1961 nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Hustler); and Marlon Brando, upon winning his second Oscar for The Godfather in 1972.
Contents
- 1 1920s
- 2 1930s
- 3 1940s
- 4 1950s
- 5 1960s
- 6 1970s
- 7 1980s
- 8 1990s
- 9 2000s
- 10 See also
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1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
