2009 – Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Crazy Heart is a 2009 American drama film, written and directed by Scott Cooper and based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb. The film centers around a down-and-out country music singer-songwriter(Jeff Bridges) who tries to turn his life around after beginning a relationship with a young journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Other supporting roles are played by Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, and child actor Jack Nation. Bridges, Farrell, and Duvall also sing in the film.
2010 – Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)
The King’s Speech is a movie about the future King George VI, played by Colin Firth, who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast on Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in 1939.
2011 – Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
The Artist is a 2011 French movie in the style of a black-and-white silent film. Written, directed, and co-edited by Michel Hazanavicius, and produced by Thomas Langmann, the film stars Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo. The story takes place in Hollywood, between 1927 and 1932, and focuses on the relationship of an older silent film star and a rising young actress as silent cinema falls out of fashion and is replaced by the “talkies”.
2012 – Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
Lincoln is a 2012 American historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. The screenplay by Tony Kushner was loosely based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and covers the final four months of Lincoln’s life, focusing on his efforts in January 1865 to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives.
2013 – Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical drama film, which tells the story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), an AIDS patient diagnosed in the mid 1980s when HIV/AIDS treatments were under-researched, while the disease was not understood and highly stigmatized. As part of the experimental AIDS treatment movement, he smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas for treating his symptoms, and distributed them to fellow people with AIDS by establishing the “Dallas Buyers Club” while facing opposition from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
2014 – Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
The Theory of Everything is set at Cambridge University and details the life of the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne). It was directed by James Marsh and adapted by Anthony McCarten from the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neurone disease), and his success in physics.
2015 – Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)
The Revenant is a 2015 American semi-biographical film directed by Alejandro González Inarritu. The screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Inarritu is based in part on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel of the same name, describing frontiersman Hugh Glass’s experiences in 1823. That novel is in turn based on the 1915 poem The Song of Hugh Glass. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, and Will Poulter.
