Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

The Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama is a Golden Globe Award that was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a separate category in 1951.

Previously, there was a single award for "Best Actor in a Motion Picture" but the splitting allowed for recognition of it and the Best Actor – Musical or Comedy.

The formal title has varied since its inception.

In 2005, it was officially called: "Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama".

As of 2013[update], the wording is "Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama".

Paul Lukas was the first recipient of this award for Watch on the Rhine (1943)
Gregory Peck won twice for The Yearling (1946) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Laurence Olivier won for Hamlet (1948)
Gary Cooper won for High Noon (1952)
Marlon Brando won for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Godfather (1972)
Alec Guinness won for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
David Niven won for Separate Tables (1958)
Burt Lancaster won for Elmer Gantry (1960)
Sidney Poitier won for Lillies of the Field (1963)
Peter O'Toole won twice for Becket (1964), and The Lion in Winter (1968)
Omar Sharif won for Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Paul Scofield won for A Man for All Seasons (1966)
George C. Scott won for Patton (1970)
Gene Hackman won for The French Connection (1971)
Al Pacino won twice for Serpico (1972) and Scent of a Woman (1992)
Jack Nicholson won thrice for Chinatown (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and About Schmidt (2002)
Jon Voight won twice Coming Home (1978) and Runaway Train (1985)
Dustin Hoffman won twice for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988)
Robert De Niro won for Raging Bull (1980)
Ben Kingsley won for Gandhi (1982)
Robert Duvall won for Tender Mercies (1983)
F. Murray Abraham won for Amadeus (1984)
Michael Douglas won for Wall Street (1987)
Tom Cruise won for Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Jeremy Irons won for Reversal of Fortune (1990)
Tom Hanks won thrice Philadelphia (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), and Cast Away (2000)
Nicolas Cage won for Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Geoffrey Rush won for Shine (1996)
Jim Carrey won for The Truman Show (1998)
Denzel Washington won for The Hurricane (1999)
Russell Crowe won for A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Sean Penn won twice for Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008)
Leonardo DiCaprio won twice for The Aviator (2004) and The Revenant (2015)
Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote (2005)
Forest Whitaker won for The Last King of Scotland (2006)
Daniel Day-Lewis won twice for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln (2012)
Colin Firth won for The King's Speech (2010)
George Clooney won for The Descendants (2011)
Matthew McConaughey won for Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Gary Oldman won for Darkest Hour (2017)
Rami Malek won for Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Joaquin Phoenix won for Joker (2019)
Chadwick Boseman won for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
Austin Butler won for Elvis (2022)
Cillian Murphy won for Oppenheimer (2023)