Greatest Hollywood Actors by Oscar Awards

Can you name the greatest male Hollywood actors of all-time based on their performance in Oscar nominations?

To make it easier, we give you a movie they starred in

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Last updated: March 11, 2024

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First submitted	August 18, 2012
Times taken	41,061
Average score	45.2%
Rating	4.39

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#	Movie	Actor
9.0	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Jack Nicholson
8.4	There Will be Blood	Daniel Day-Lewis
7.6	Boys Town	Spencer Tracy
7.0	On the Waterfront	Marlon Brando
6.8	The Graduate	Dustin Hoffman
6.2	Forrest Gump	Tom Hanks
6.2	Malcolm X	Denzel Washington
6.0	High Noon	Gary Cooper
6.0	Silence of the Lambs	Anthony Hopkins
6.0	The Apartment	Jack Lemmon
6.0	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Fredric March
6.0	Mystic River	Sean Penn
5.8	Hamlet	Laurence Olivier
5.6	Taxi Driver	Robert De Niro
5.4	Cool Hand Luke	Paul Newman
4.8	Scarface	Al Pacino
4.4	The French Connection	Gene Hackman
4.4	The Life of Emile Zola	Paul Muni
4.2	The Departed	Leonardo DiCaprio
4.0	The Big Lebowski	Jeff Bridges
4.0	Open Range	Robert Duvall
4.0	Alfie	Michael Caine
4.0	To Kill a Mockingbird	Gregory Peck
4.0	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	James Stewart
3.8	Kentucky	Walter Brennan
3.6	The Usual Suspects	Kevin Spacey
3.6	From Here to Eternity	Burt Lancaster
3.4	Kiss of the Spider Woman	William Hurt
3.4	Deliverance	Jon Voight
3.4	Joker	Joaquin Phoenix
3.2	Zorba the Greek	Anthony Quinn

#	Movie	Actor
3.2	Lawrence of Arabia	Peter O'Toole
3.2	Casablanca	Humphrey Bogart
3.2	White Heat	James Cagney
3.2	A Double Life	Ronald Colman
3.2	The Bells of St. Mary's	Bing Crosby
3.2	A Beautiful Mind	Russell Crowe
3.2	Gone With the Wind	Clark Gable
3.2	Stalag 17	William Holden
3.2	The Private Life of Henry VIII	Charles Laughton
3.2	Star Wars	Alec Guinness
3.2	Gandhi	Ben Kingsley
3.2	Shine	Geoffrey Rush
3.2	Patton	George C. Scott
3.0	Capote	Philip Seymour Hoffman
3.0	Cyrano de Bergerac	José Ferrer
3.0	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Gary Oldman
3.0	Judgment at Nuremberg	Maximilian Schell
3.0	In the Heat of the Night	Rod Steiger
2.8	Ninotchka	Melvyn Douglas
2.8	Disraeli	George Arliss
2.8	Treasure Island	Wallace Beery
2.8	Raising Arizona	Nicolas Cage
2.8	Goodbye, Mr. Chips	Robert Donat
2.8	Mr. Holland's Opus	Richard Dreyfuss
2.8	Network	Peter Finch
2.8	The King's Speech	Colin Firth
2.8	The Grapes of Wrath	Henry Fonda
2.8	My Fair Lady	Rex Harrison
2.8	In the Heat of the Night	Sidney Poitier
2.8	The Theory of Everything	Eddie Redmayne
2.8	True Grit	John Wayne

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Greatest Hollywood Actresses by Oscar Awards

21 Comments

+10

Level ∞

Nov 12, 2019

We've reset this quiz to use Oscar nominations instead of an outdated list from AMC. Here's the methodology:

2 points for a Best Actor win

1 point for a Best Supporting Actor win

0.4 points for a Best Actor nomination

0.2 points for a Best Supporting Actor nomination

Level 89

Nov 12, 2019

Just checking these points totals via wikipedia and Paul Newman should have 5.0 instead of 5.4, Dicaprio should have 3.4 instead of 3.8, Kevin Spacey should have 3.0 but has 3.6, Gary Cooper should have 5.2 instead of 6.0 and Jack Nicholson should have 8.0 instead of 9.0. I checked a few other totals and they were all slightly off too. Unless I'm missing something, this quiz might need to be redone.

Level ∞

Nov 13, 2019

Paul Newman:

Best actor: 8 nominations + 1 win = (8*0.4 + 2) = 5.2

Best supporting actor: 1 nomination = 0.2

Total = 5.4

I didn't check the other ones you mentioned, but I used a script so there's a good chance we are accurate unless the source data is wrong.

Level 89

Nov 13, 2019

Ok I see where our difference comes from. Newman got 8 best actor nominations, and from those 8 noms, he lost 7 times and won once. So I was calculating (7*0.4 + 2) + 0.2 for a supporting nomination. Which accounts for our difference. That wiki source counts a win as also being a nomination. I don't know if that's how you meant for it to be calculated, but yeh its all good.

Level ∞

Nov 13, 2019

I thought that might be the difference. Thanks for checking.

Level 74

Nov 20, 2019

I wondered how Richard Burton missed being on the list. He had a lot of nominations - six best actor and one supporting - but never winning puts him just under with 2.6 (if I did the math correctly.) It's hard to believe he never won an Oscar.

Level 87

Dec 6, 2019

Burton and O'Toole were tied for the most nominations without any wins for a long time. Then, O'Toole won a Life Achievement Award and an 8th nomination 24 years after Burton's death.

Part of what makes this interesting is that, in one case, they were both nominated for the same film: Becket.

Level 86

Nov 12, 2019

Fun quiz! (Even though I did lousy.)

Level 67

Nov 20, 2019

If Day-Lewis did more than one movie every three years, he would run away with the top spot. Nicholson is great, but he is no match for Daniel Day-Lewis.

Level 91

Nov 20, 2019

Since Day-Lewis is retired and Nicholson hasn't been in anything in the last couple years, I don't think it's going to change.

Level 67

Nov 20, 2019

Day-Lewis retired once before and then came back. He's still in his 50's, so it's possible he'll act again if the right script comes along...especially if Paul Thomas Anderson can find something for him to do, but he also seems pretty indifferent to the idea of being a movie star, so who knows. Nicholson is in his 80's and there are persistent rumors that he has disappeared from the screen because age has withered his mind and his memory, so I don't think we'll see him act again.

Level 91

Nov 20, 2019

I guess that’s a good point. Actors don’t always stay retired. Look at Joe Pesci in The Irishman (which was great by the way). And at this point I think we can agree that Nicholson’s pretty much retired already so I think there’s very little chance of him getting nominated again.

Level 65

Nov 20, 2019

Randomly tried "Douglas" to try to perhaps catch Kirk or Michael and ended up scoring for Melvyn.

Level 71

Nov 20, 2019

I didn't do very well, but I typed "Cage" as a joke towards the end, and was shocked to find him actually on the list.

+11

Level 67

Nov 20, 2019

He is really overhated. Some of his performances are ridiculous, but he can be really good in the right role. What I think is most admirable about him is that he brings *everything* he has to every role he's in, whether it's Oscar bait or some nonsensical action movie. There are much better actors -- Pacino, Nicholson, De Niro, even Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code -- who clearly mail it in when they're doing a movie they don't find very interesting. Nicolas Cage gives it 150% every time, which is a big part of what makes him so funny. He's needlessly intense in lightweight movies, especially action movies, in which everyone else is going at about half-speed because they know the dialogue is preposterous and the set pieces will steal the show anyway. But to watch Cage, you'd think The Rock was King Lear.

Level 73

Nov 30, 2019

Great quiz - Will we see one for actresses and directors soon??

Level ∞

Feb 11, 2020

Here's the one for actresses.

Level 74

Feb 17, 2020

I know there has to be a metric used to create a list like this but when you have the likes of Cary Grant missing from a Greatest Hollywood Actors list but others who are not old enough to compare by length and, frankly, talent it's a bogus list. Considering there are greats that were never nominated and flash in the pans that have won, Oscars is never a reason to mark someone as the best.

Level 94

Dec 7, 2021

except when the category is greatest by oscar awards.

Level 93

Apr 14, 2023

When Oscar wins and nominations are the predicate factor for the quiz as stated by the title, don't be surprised when actors like Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe aren't present.

Level 82

May 8, 2020

Nice to see Walter Brennan on a best actors list for a change.