BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role facts for kids

Quick facts for kids BAFTA Award for Best Actor
The 2025 recipient: Robert Aramayo
Presented by	British Academy of Film and Television Arts
Location	United Kingdom
Currently held by	Robert Aramayo for I Swear (2025)

The BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role is a special prize given out every year by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). It celebrates an actor who has given an amazing performance in a main role in a movie. This award has been given since the 6th BAFTA Awards.

For a while, from 1952 to 1967, there were actually two Best Actor awards: one for British actors and another for actors from other countries. But in 1968, these two awards were combined into one single "Best Actor" award. Since 1995, it has been called the "Best Actor in a Leading Role."

The actor with the most wins in this category is Peter Finch, who has won five times! The most recent actor to win this award is Robert Aramayo for his role in the movie I Swear (2025).

Past Winners

Ralph Richardson was the first recipient of this award, winning for The Sound Barrier (1952)

1950s Winners

1960s Winners

1970s Winners

1980s Winners

1990s Winners

2000s Winners

2010s Winners

2020s Winners

Actors with Multiple Nominations

Actors with Multiple Wins

Award Records

Images for kids

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

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  John Gielgud won for Julius Caesar (1953)

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  Laurence Olivier won for Richard III (1955)

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  Ernest Borgnine won for Marty (1955)

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  Peter Finch won five times in 1956, 1960, 1961, 1971, and 1976

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

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  Henry Fonda won for 12 Angry Men (1957)

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  Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win for The Defiant Ones (1958)

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  Peter Sellers won for I'm All Right Jack (1958)

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

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  Paul Newman won for The Hustler (1961)

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

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  Burt Lancaster won twice for Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1981)

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

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

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  Richard Attenborough won for Guns at Batasi / Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1968)

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

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  Paul Scofield won for A Man for All Seasons (1966)

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  Rod Steiger won twice for The Pawnbroker (1966) and In the Heat of the Night (1967)

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

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

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  Robert Redford won for three films in 1970

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

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  Walter Matthau won for Charley Varrick / Pete 'n' Tillie (1973)

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

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

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  John Hurt won for The Elephant Man (1980)

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  Ben Kingsley won for Gandhi (1982)

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  Michael Caine won for Educating Rita (1983)

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  Sean Connery won for The Name of the Rose (1987)

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  John Cleese won for A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

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  Daniel Day-Lewis won four times for My Left Foot (1989), Gangs of New York (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012)

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  Anthony Hopkins won thrice for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Remains of the Day (1993) and The Father (2020)

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  Robert Downey Jr. won for Chaplin (1992)

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

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  Geoffrey Rush won for Shine (1996)

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  Robert Carlyle won for The Full Monty (1997)

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  Roberto Benigni won for Life Is Beautiful (1998)

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  Kevin Spacey won for American Beauty (1999)

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  Jamie Bell won for Billy Elliot (2000)

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  Russell Crowe won for A Beautiful Mind (2001)

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  Bill Murray won for Lost in Translation (2003)

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  Jamie Foxx won for Ray (2004)

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  Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote (2005)

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  Forest Whitaker won for The Last King of Scotland (2006)

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  Colin Firth won twice for A Single Man (2009) and The King's Speech (2010)

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  Jean Dujardin won for The Artist (2011)

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  Chiwetel Ejiofor won for 12 Years a Slave (2013)

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  Eddie Redmayne won for The Theory of Everything (2014)

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  Leonardo DiCaprio won for The Revenant (2015)

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  Casey Affleck won for Manchester by the Sea (2016)

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  Gary Oldman won for Darkest Hour (2017)

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  Rami Malek won for Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

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  Joaquin Phoenix won for Joker (2019)

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  Austin Butler won for Elvis (2022)

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  Cillian Murphy won for Oppenheimer (2023)

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  Adrien Brody won for The Brutalist (2024)

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:BAFTA al mejor actor para niños

• Academy Award for Best Actor
• Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor
• Guldbagge Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
• Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
• Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
• Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role