Best Actress in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film Award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.
- From 1952 to 1967, there were two Best Actress awards presented, Best British Actress and Best Foreign Actress.
- From 1968 onwards, the two awards merged into one award, which from 1968 to 1984 was known as Best Actress.
- From 1985 to present, the award has been known by its current name of Best Actress in a Leading Role.
In the following lists, the titles and names in bold with a gold background are the winners and recipients respectively; those not in bold are the nominees. The years given are those in which the films under consideration were released, not the year of the ceremony, which always takes place the following year.
Winners and nominees
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Superlatives
Multiple nominations
12 nominations
8 nominations
7 nominations
6 nominations
5 nominations
4 nominations
3 nominations
2 nominations
Multiple wins
4 wins
3 wins
2 wins
See also
Notes
A: Rules from the 1960s to the 1970s allowed for a performer to receive a single citation which could honor their work in more than one film. Shirley MacLaine, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Bibi Andersson, Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Katharine Ross, Goldie Hawn, and Stéphane Audran were all nominated for their roles in two different films in the same category, while Mia Farrow was nominated for three films.
B: Elliot Page was nominated before his gender transition in 2020.
C: Emmanuelle Riva and Marion Cotillard both received nominations for French-speaking roles. It was the first time that multiple foreign-language performances were nominated for Best Actress in the same year since separate Best Foreign Actress and Best British Actress awards were folded into a single category in 1968.
References
External links