Awardswatch’s Best Actor Nominee Rankings – 2000s Edition

05

04

03

02

01

Answers to the hints at the beginning:

1. Only one performance received no votes.
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness

2. One actor has two of his nominated performances in the bottom five.
Will Smith, Ali (46) and The Pursuit of Happyness (50)

3. Only two times did Oscar and AW agree on the winning performance of each year.
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood (2007) and Sean Penn, Milk (2008)

4. Two years have four of the five performances in the upper half while two years also have four of the five performances in the lower half.
2002 – Brody, Cage, Day-Lewis and Nicholson were all in the upper half.
2005 – Hoffman, Ledger, Phoenix and Strathairn were all in the upper half.
2001 – Crowe, Penn Smith and Washington were all in the lower half.
2006 – DiCaprio, O’Toole, Smith and Whitaker were all in the lower half.

5. 16 different performances ranked first on the ballots.
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain – 18 mentions
Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood – 14 mentions
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises – 5 mentions
Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom – 4 mentions
Russell Crowe, Gladiator – 3 mentions
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler – 3 mentions
Nicolas Cage, Adaptation – 2 mentions
Daniel Day Lewis, Gangs of New York – 2 mentions
Adrien Brody, The Pianist – 1 mention
Colin Firth, A Single Man – 1 mention
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation – 1 mention
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote – 1 mention
Tom Hanks, Cast Away – 1 mention
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker – 1 mention
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson – 1 mention
Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland – 1 mention

Full list:

1 Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
2 Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
3 Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom
4 Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
5 Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
6 Colin Firth, A Single Man
7 Sean Penn, Milk
8 Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
9 Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
10 Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
11 Nicolas Cage, Adaptation
12 Adrien Brody, The Pianist
13 Daniel Day Lewis, Gangs of New York
14 Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator
15 Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean
16 Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
17 Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
18 Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
19 David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck
20 Jude Law, Cold Mountain
21 Tom Hanks, Cast Away
22 Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt
23 Ed Harris, Pollock
24 Sean Penn, Mystic River
25 Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
26 Russell Crowe, Gladiator
27 Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind
28 Denzel Washington, Training Day
29 Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
30 Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda
31 Michael Caine, The Quiet American
32 George Clooney, Michael Clayton
33 Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
34 George Clooney, Up in the Air
35 Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
36 Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
37 Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
38 Peter O’Toole, Venus
39 Geoffrey Rush, Quills
40 Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
41 Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
42 Ben Kingsley, House of Sand and Fog
43 Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
44 Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
45 Jamie Foxx, Ray
46 Will Smith, Ali
47 Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
48 Sean Penn, I Am Sam
49 Morgan Freeman, Invictus
50 Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness

Fun facts and stats:

Here’s how the actors ranked alongside their co-nominees for a given year.

2000:
Bardem (16)
Hanks (21)
Harris (23)
Crowe (26) –> won the Oscar
Rush (39)

2001
Wilkinson (3)
Crowe (27)
Washington (28) –> won the Oscar
Smith (46)
Penn (48)

2002
Cage (11)
Brody (12) –> won the Oscar
Day Lewis (13)
Nicholson (22)
Caine (31)

2003
Murray (4)
Depp (15)
Law (20)
Penn (27) –> won the Oscar
Kinglsey (42)

2004
di Caprio (14)
Eastwood (25)
Cheadle (30)
Depp (44)
Foxx (45) –> won the Oscar

2005
Ledger (1)
Hoffman (10) –> won the Oscar
Phoenix (18)
Strathairn (19)
Howard (29)

2006
Gosling (8)
di Caprio (37)
O’Toole (38)
Whitaker (43) –> won the Oscar
Smith (50)

2007
Day Lewis (2) –> won the Oscar
Mortensen (5)
Clooney (32)
Depp (36)
Jones (41)

2008
Penn (7) –> won the Oscar
Rourke (9)
Jenkins (33)
Pitt (35)
Langella (47)

2009
Firth (6)
Renner (17)
Clooney (34)
Bridges (40) –> won the Oscar
Freeman (49)

If AW gave the Oscars in the 2000s:
2000: Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
2001: Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom
2002: Nicolas Cage, Adaptation
2003: Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
2004: Leonardo di Caprio, The Aviator
2005: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
2006: Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
2007: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
2008: Sean Penn, Milk
2009: Colin Firth, A Single Man

Coming up Friday, BEST ACTRESS NOMINEES! Tune in…

• Author
• Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• 2025 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR (November) - November 21, 2024
• 2025 Oscars: Eligibility Lists for Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature Film for the 97th Academy Awards - November 21, 2024
• Nava Mau, Sean Wang Among 2024 BAFTA Breakthroughs Championing New ‘Must-Watch’ Creatives - November 21, 2024