I’ve compiled a list of the best actors in each year of Oscar history. I’ve also included their average for each year.

The main reason for creating this list is to encourage discussion about the best actors of all times. The list is not a reflection of my taste, but a reflection on the award given that year. Some people may disagree with certain actors being chosen over others, but let’s remember that this isn’t a list of best performances, it’s just a list of the best actors. If you have any comments, please leave them below.

The Best Actor Of All Times:

1) Robert De Niro – 3 Best Actor Awards

2) Leonardo DiCaprio – 2 Best Actor Awards

3) Brad Pitt – 1 Best Actor Award

4) Al Pacino – 1 Best Actor Award

5) Tom Hanks – 1 Best Actor Award

6) Jack Nicholson – 1 Best Actor Award

7) Edward Norton – 1 Best Actor Award

8) Dustin Hoffman – 1 Best Actor Award

9) Denzel Washington – 1 Best Actor Award

10) Morgan Freeman – 1 Best Actor Award

My blog is an exercise to find the best actors in each year of Academy Awards history. The results are based on an analysis of the top award winners and nominees in the best actor category.

How was this blog generated?

I used a simple approach (which I will explain in this blog) to generate a list of actors that were top performers in each year of Oscar history. The idea is to use the best actor category as a proxy for performance, and assuming that the winner of best actor is the most impressive performance in any given year.

The first step was to extract all best actor winners and nominees from Oscar history, along with their respective IMDb movie count and average ratings. Before getting started, read below for a few background facts about the data.

Best Actor Data:

1 – There are no best actor categories prior to 1927/1928 Oscars, so those years were ignored. 2 – IMDb movie counts for all actors in my universe include pre-Oscar movies only (i.e. movies made before their win or nomination). 3 – IMDb average ratings are based on all available votes at the time of data download (and include post-Oscar movies), as there is no way to separate pre-Oscar votes from others.

I have been watching the Oscars for almost all my life and I have seen my favorite actors win and lose.

I decided to make a list of the top actors based on their performance in every Oscar year with a brief description of how well they did.

The first year that I watched the Oscars was 2001 when Russell Crowe won Best Actor for his role in Gladiator.

He was one of the first actors that I thought was very talented. His performance in Gladiator is amazing as Maximus and this film got him many nominations and awards.

The second year I watched the Oscars was 2002 and it was a very good year for performances, especially Best Actor.

Daniel Day Lewis won Best Actor for his incredible performance as Bill “The Butcher” Cutting in Gangs of New York. This is still one of my favorite Oscar wins ever because Daniel Day Lewis gave an incredible speech thanking his family and friends who were there with him during this time when he knew he might not win an Oscar again after winning two already before then (My Left Foot in 1989 and There Will Be Blood in 2007).

The third year that I watched the Oscars was 2003 which is one of my least favorite Oscar years because there were not many great performances but Johnny Depp won Best Actor for his performance

This year, the Oscars are celebrating its 89th edition. There’s a huge amount of data to go through and analyze, but I’ve always liked the idea of analyzing the actors that have won each year. The criteria for this is simple: if you’ve won an Oscar for Best Actor, you are considered a Top Actor for that year.

Characters

Introduction

I’ve tried to put the data into some sort of chronological order so we can see how the Oscar winners were distributed over time. First let’s take a look at how many Oscar wins there have been in each decade:

Decade Number of Winners 1920s 0 1930s 6 1940s 5 1950s 3 1960s 5 1970s 4 1980s 5 1990s 3 2000s 5 2010s 2

This is clearly not a normal distribution, we can see that there has been a spike in performance around the 1940s and up until 2010, there has been a resurgence once again. Let’s take a look at actors who have won more than one Oscar:

Name Number of Wins Katharine Hepburn 4 Jack Nicholson 3 Ingrid Bergman 3 Meryl Streep 3 Paul Newman 2 Spencer Tracy 2 Tom Hanks 2 Walter Brennan 2 Bette Davis 2 Lu

Best Actor and Actress Oscar Winning Actors and Actresses, from 1927 to present. This is a list of the Best Actor and Actress Oscar winners by the number of awards won. The list is sortable by clicking on the column headings.

Natalie Portman, 2011

Colin Firth, 2010

Jeff Bridges, 2009

Sean Penn, 2008

Daniel Day-Lewis, 2007

Forest Whitaker, 2006

Philip Seymour Hoffman, 2005

Jamie Foxx, 2004

Sean Penn, 2003

Adrien Brody, 2002

Denzel Washington, 2001

Russell Crowe, 2000

Here is the list of all actors who won the Oscar in each year.

1928 Emil Jannings The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh

1929 Warner Baxter In Old Arizona

1930 George Arliss Disraeli

1931 Lionel Barrymore A Free Soul

1932 Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Royal Family of Broadway

1933 Charles Laughton The Private Life of Henry VIII

1934 Clark Gable It Happened One Night

1935 Victor McLaglen The Informer

1936 Paul Muni The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Life of Emile Zola

1937 Spencer Tracy Captains Courageous, San Francisco, and Boys Town (2)

1938 Spencer Tracy Boys Town and Test Pilot (3)

1939 Robert Donat Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Later than Spring (4)

1940 James Stewart Destry Rides Again, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Made for Each Other (5)

1941 Gary Cooper Sergeant York, Ball of Fire, Meet John Doe, and The Westerner (6)

1942 James Cagney Yankee Doodle Dandy and Gentleman Jim (7)

1943 Paul Lukas Watch on

Focusing on the men and women who gave their all to their craft and became the most celebrated actors in Oscar history.

Most of these “great” actors have been recognized by the academy with an Oscar nomination or award.

A true actor gives his/her best and give us a character to cherish.

These are my favorite actors of all time, who have done great work in some of my favorite films. I am listing them here in order to expand their “fan base”.