BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
award
Best Actor in a Supporting Role is a British Academy Film Award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to recognise an actor who has delivered an outstanding supporting performance in a film.
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.
History
Since 1968, selected actors have been awarded with the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at an annual ceremony. The Best Supporting Actor award has been presented a total of 54 times to 48 different actors. No award was given out in this category in 1980, when no actors, male or female, were nominated for supporting roles. In addition, the award was replaced with a gender-neutral category for Best Supporting Artist, allotted for the year 1981 only, with all four nominees that year being male. The first winner was Ian Holm for his role in The Bofors Gun. The most recent winner is Sean Penn for his role in One Battle After Another. The record for most wins is three, held by Denholm Elliott, who won three consecutive times, while five other actors have won twice.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role” is award. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through BAFTA, Award and Best, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “award” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q548389. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1980 and 1981.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role primary sources, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role archive and BAFTA research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.