Watch a Video of All 78 Best Actor Oscar Winners
Here’s a fun fact: During the first three years of the Academy Awards, actors could be nominated for their performances across multiple films. That’s why the first-ever Best Actor winner to show up in our supercut, German actor Emil Jannings, has two credits under his name for the Oscar he received in 1929. It was an interesting but confusing system, and by 1931 the Academy voting rules specified that actors should be nominated for just one film a year — as it remains today. In this video, Yahoo Movies takes a tour through every Best Actor Academy Award-winning performance in history, from Jannings to Eddie Redmayne (who took home the trophy last year for The Theory of Everything). Watch it above.
Related: Watch a Video of Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Ever
These days, the Best Actor award goes almost exclusively to performances in dramas, but as the video shows, this wasn’t always the case. Some of the earliest winners included Frederic March for his title role in the horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931/1932), Clark Gable for the romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934), and Spencer Tracy for the action-adventure film Captains Courageous (1937). As the list goes on, we get glimpses of some of the most memorable performances in Hollywood history, like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954), Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Robert De Niro in Raging Bull (1980), and of course, Daniel Day-Lewis — who holds the record for most Best Actor awards, with three — in My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012).
Related: Watch a Supercut of Every Best Visual Effects Oscar Winner
This year’s Academy Awards will take place on Feb. 28, when the nominees competing for Best Actor will be Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Matt Damon (The Martian), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant), Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs), and Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl).
