Top 5 Academy Awards Winners for Best Actor

Each February we await the results of the Academy Awards with eager anticipation. This year will be no different than any other - we will agree with some of the Academy's choice and not others. Looking back over the years these are my choices for the best of the best selected to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor.

My personal favorite is Tom Hanks, who first came to the public eye in the television series Bosom Buddies. Moving from this into a series of incredible films, he showed his versatility as an actor being nominated five times for best actor. He won one Academy Award for his role as the unforgettable Forrest Gump in the movie of the same name in 1994. The other award came a year earlier in the movie Philadelphia, in which he portrayed a homosexual man dealing with aids while trying to hide it from his coworkers. A man of great talent his movies are always great to watch.

Winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actor, Dustin Hoffman is one of a select few great actors who can easily portray any number of characters and have you believe in them. His role as the newly single father in Kramer vs. Kramer change the way Americans viewed child custody battles in divorce. His second award was for Rain Man, where he portrayed the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt. Delivering a flawless performance from beginning to end, he left viewers in tears as the two brothers discovered their true need for each other.

Although he only won one Academy Award for Best Actor, John Wayne is truly one for the most well known and loved actors to have ever graced the silver screen. Portraying the drunken U.S. Marshall Rooster J. Cogburn in True Grit, he presents an irascible character that we can all love. NO matter what film he starred in and whether they won awards or not, John Wayne never left us in doubt that he had the "grit" to make a great movie, and has become a national icon

Portraying an alcoholic in the lasts stages of the disease, Nicholas Cage creates an unforgettable persona in Leaving Las Vegas to win his Best Actor Award. Co-starring opposite Elisabeth Shue (the prostitute), his character Ben Anderson leaves all he knows behind and heads to Vegas on a mission to drink himself to death. Delivering an excellent performance as a drunk, he leaves the world a little better place when he dies at the end of the movie. This versatile star continues to produce great films and will no doubt be nominated for more awards in the future.

The rough, tough cynical acting style of Humphrey Bogart left us with a legacy of many great movies. Perhaps one of the most well known being Casablanca, but this was not the one that won him his Academy Award for Best Actor. Instead he won the award for his role as the rough and ready captain Charlie Allnut, on the supply boat the African Queen, who attempts with the help of Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) to sink a German gunboat in WW2. Portraying a drunken tough guy is one of his best performances and definitely puts Bogey on my top list.

No matter who your favorites are and whether or not they have won an Oscar they have all dedicated their lives to making ours a little richer. So if you haven't seen some of these give them a look if you, if have watch them again. Whatever you do be sure to tune in on February 22^nd to see who the newest winners are.

Source: wikipedia.com