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

was the first recipient of this award for Watch on the Rhine (1943) won twice for The Yearling (1946) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) won for Hamlet (1948) won for High Noon (1952) won for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Godfather (1972) won for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) won for Separate Tables (1958) won for Elmer Gantry (1960) won for Lillies of the Field (1963) won twice for Becket (1964), and The Lion in Winter (1968) won for Doctor Zhivago (1965) won for A Man for All Seasons (1966) won for Patton (1970) won for The French Connection (1971) won twice for Serpico (1972) and Scent of a Woman (1992) won thrice for Chinatown (1974), ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and About Schmidt'' (2002) won twice Coming Home (1978) and Runaway Train (1985) won twice for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988) won for Raging Bull (1980) won for Gandhi (1982) won for Tender Mercies (1983) won for Amadeus (1984) won for Wall Street (1987) won for Born on the Fourth of July (1989) won for Reversal of Fortune (1990) won thrice Philadelphia (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), and Cast Away (2000) won for Leaving Las Vegas (1995) won for Shine (1996) won for The Truman Show (1998) won for The Hurricane (1999) won for A Beautiful Mind (2001) won twice for Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008) won twice for The Aviator (2004) and The Revenant (2015) won for Capote (2005) won for The Last King of Scotland (2006) won twice for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln (2012) won for ''The King's Speech'' (2010) won for The Descendants (2011) won for Dallas Buyers Club (2013) won for Darkest Hour (2017) won for Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) won for Joker (2019) won for ''Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'' (2020) won for Elvis (2022) won for Oppenheimer (2023) won for The Brutalist (2024) 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s ==Multiple nominations==

;10 nominations • Al Pacino ;9 nominations • Leonardo DiCaprio • Denzel Washington ;8 nominations • Jack Nicholson ;7 nominations • Daniel Day-Lewis • Paul Newman ;6 nominations • Tom Hanks • Jack Lemmon ;5 nominations • Richard Burton • Russell Crowe • Gene Hackman • Dustin Hoffman • Anthony Hopkins • Peter O'Toole • Gregory Peck • Sidney Poitier • Jon Voight ;4 nominations • Warren Beatty • Marlon Brando • Robert De Niro • Burt Lancaster • Will Smith • Spencer Tracy ;3 nominations • Javier Bardem • Michael Caine • George Clooney • Tom Cruise • Albert Finney • Harrison Ford • Fredric March • Steve McQueen • Liam Neeson • Nick Nolte • Laurence Olivier • Sean Penn • Brad Pitt • George C. Scott ;2 nominations • Alan Arkin • Alan Bates • Jeff Bridges • Adrien Brody • Timothée Chalamet • Bradley Cooper • Gary Cooper • Kevin Costner • Benedict Cumberbatch • Tony Curtis • Matt Damon • Colman Domingo • Kirk Douglas • Michael Douglas • Joel Edgerton • Richard Farnsworth • Michael Fassbender • Ralph Fiennes • Peter Finch • Colin Firth • Henry Fonda • Morgan Freeman • Richard Gere • Ryan Gosling • Rex Harrison • Charlton Heston • Tom Hulce • William Hurt • Jeremy Irons • Ben Kingsley • Ian McKellen • Ray Milland • Viggo Mortensen • Joaquin Phoenix • Gary Oldman • Anthony Quinn • Eddie Redmayne • Geoffrey Rush • Maximilian Schell • Kevin Spacey • Rod Steiger • Forest Whitaker • Robin Williams ==Multiple wins==

;3 wins • Tom Hanks (2 consecutive) • Jack Nicholson (2 consecutive) ;2 wins • Marlon Brando • Daniel Day-Lewis • Leonardo DiCaprio • Dustin Hoffman • Peter O'Toole • Al Pacino • Gregory Peck • Jon Voight ==Firsts==

• José Ferrer became the first Latino as well as the first Puerto Rican actor to win in 1951. • Sidney Poitier became the first actor of African descent as well as the first Bahamian actor to win in 1963. • Omar Sharif became the first actor of Middle Eastern descent as well as the first Egyptian actor to win in 1966. • Peter Finch became the first actor to win posthumously in 1977. • Ben Kingsley became the first actor of Asian descent to win in 1983. • Wagner Moura became the first actor to win for a foreign language/non-English language performance in 2025. ==See also==