Academy Award for Best Actor | |
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![]() The 2023 recipient: Cillian Murphy | |
Awarded for | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role |
Country | United States |
Presented by | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) |
First awarded | 1929 |
Most recent winner | Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer (2024) |
Most awards | Daniel Day-Lewis (3) |
Most nominations | Laurence Olivier and Spencer Tracy (9) |
Website | oscars |
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 96 times, to 86 actors. The first winner was German actor Emil Jannings for his roles in The Last Command (1928) and The Way of All Flesh (1927).[1] The most recent winner is Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer (2023), who simultaneously became the first Irish-born actor to win this award. Italian actor Roberto Benigni gave the first non-English winning performance in Life Is Beautiful (1997) in this category. 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. James Dean, with two consecutive nominations, remains the only actor to have been posthumously nominated for this award more than once. 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. Peter O'Toole holds the record in this category for most nominations (eight) without a win—albeit in 2003, he was an Honorary Oscar recipient.