BAFTA Award for Best Actor
The 2022 recipient Austin Butler
Description	Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Location	United Kingdom
Presented by	British Academy of Film and Television Arts
Currently held by	Austin Butler for Elvis (2022)
Website	http://www.bafta.org/

Best Actor in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film Award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.

Superlatives

Note: Dustin Hoffman's total of eight nominations, includes his 1968 Most Promising Newcomer nomination for The Graduate.

Winners and nominees

From 1952 to 1967, there were two Best Actor awards: one for a British actor and another for a foreign actor. In 1968, the two prizes of British and Foreign actor were combined to create a single Best Actor award. Its current title, for Best Actor in a Leading Role, has been used since 1995.

Ralph Richardson won for The Sound Barrier (1952)

Marlon Brando won three times for Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and On the Waterfront (1954)

John Gielgud won for Julius Caesar (1953)

Laurence Olivier won for Richard III (1955)

Peter Finch has won five awards from seven nominations for his roles in A Town Like Alice (1956), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), No Love for Johnnie (1961), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and Network (1976)

Alec Guinness won for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Henry Fonda won for 12 Angry Men (1957)

Peter Sellers won for I'm All Right Jack (1959)

Sidney Poitier won in 1958 for his performance in The Defiant Ones, thus becoming the first black actor to win in this category^[1][2]

Jack Lemmon won three times for Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960) and The China Syndrome (1979)

Richard Burton won for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold / Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Paul Newman won for The Hustler (1961)

Peter O'Toole won for Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Burt Lancaster won for Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

Marcello Mastroianni won twice in Divorce Italian Style (1963), and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1964)

Richard Attenborough won for Guns at Batasi / Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964

Lee Marvin won for The Killers / Cat Ballou (1965)

Spencer Tracy won for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1968)

Dustin Hoffman won twice for Midnight Cowboy / John and Mary (1969), and Tootsie (1983)

Gene Hackman won for The French Connection and The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Jack Nicholson won twice for The Last Detail / Chinatown (1974), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Al Pacino won for The Godfather Part II / Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Ben Kingsley won for Gandhi (1982)

Michael Caine won for Educating Rita (1983)

Daniel Day-Lewis is the first actor to win this award four times, in 1989, 2002, 2007, and 2012, for his performances in My Left Foot, Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, respectively

Anthony Hopkins won three times for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Remains of the Day (1993) and The Father (2020) ^[3]

Robert Downey Jr. won for his performances as Charlie Chaplin in 1992's Chaplin

Hugh Grant won for his performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Geoffrey Rush won for his performance in Shine (1996)

Roberto Benigni won in 1998 for Life Is Beautiful

Kevin Spacey won for his performance in American Beauty (1999)

Russell Crowe won once from three consecutive nominations for playing John Forbes Nash Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Bill Murray won for his role in Lost in Translation (2003)

Jamie Foxx won for Ray (2004).

Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote (2005)

Forest Whitaker won for his performance as Idi Amin in the 2006 film, The Last King of Scotland

Mickey Rourke won for The Wrestler (2008)

Colin Firth won two consecutive Best Actor awards for his performances in 2009's A Single Man and 2010's The King's Speech

Jean Dujardin became the first French actor to win for The Artist (2011)^[4]

Chiwetel Ejiofor became the first black-British actor to win this category for his performance in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Eddie Redmayne won for The Theory of Everything (2014)

Leonardo DiCaprio won for The Revenant (2015)

Casey Affleck won for Manchester by the Sea (2016).

Gary Oldman won for Darkest Hour (2017)

Rami Malek won Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Joaquin Phoenix won for his portrayal of the title character in Joker (2019)

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Note: All nominations for multiple performances in a single year from the 1950s to the 1970s count as one nomination. The two mentions for Michael Caine (1983) and Anthony Hopkins (1993) count as two separate nominations.

Multiple nominations

Multiple wins