Saturn Award for Best Actor
| Saturn Award for Best Actor | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Awarded for | Best performance of the year by a male in a leading role in a genre film |
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films |
| First awarded | 1974/75 |
| Currently held by | Tom Cruise for Top Gun: Maverick (2021/2022) |
| Website | www |
The Saturn Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed, who felt that films within those genres were never given the appreciation they deserved. The physical award is a representation of the planet Saturn, surrounded with a ring of film. The award was initially and is still sometimes loosely referred to as a Golden Scroll. The award for Best Actor was first introduced in 1976 for the 1974 and 1975 years, to reward a lead performance by a male actor in film.
The record for most awards is held by Robert Downey, Jr. with four wins, followed by Mark Hamill with three, and then Jeff Bridges, Tom Cruise, and Harrison Ford (two each). Cruise is the most nominated actor in the category with twelve nominations, followed by Downey, Jr. and Arnold Schwarzenegger with seven. Schwarzenegger holds the record for most nominations without a victory. Anthony Hopkins and Martin Landau are the only actors to have won the Saturn Award for Best Actor and an Academy Award for the same role; however, Landau won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and not Best Actor. The record for most wins for playing a same character is held by Downey Jr. and Hamill, who both won three times for playing Tony Stark and Luke Skywalker respectively.
Winners and nominees
1970s
| Year | Actor | Film | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
1974/1975
(3rd) |
James Caan | Rollerball | Jonathan E. |
| Don Johnson | A Boy and His Dog | Vic | |
1976
(4th) |
David Bowie | The Man Who Fell to Earth | Thomas Jerome Newton |
1977
(5th) |
George Burns | Oh, God! | God |
| Richard Dreyfuss | Close Encounters of the Third Kind | Roy Neary | |
| Harrison Ford | Star Wars | Han Solo | |
| Mark Hamill | Luke Skywalker | ||
| William Shatner | Kingdom of the Spiders | Dr. Rack Hansen | |
| Michael York | The Island of Dr. Moreau | Andrew Braddock | |
1978
(6th) |
Warren Beatty | Heaven Can Wait | Joe Pendleton |
| Christopher Lee | The Wicker Man | Lord Summerisle | |
| Laurence Olivier | The Boys from Brazil | Ezra Lieberman | |
| Christopher Reeve | Superman | Clark Kent / Superman | |
| Donald Sutherland | Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Matthew Bennell | |
1979
(7th) |
George Hamilton | Love at First Bite | Count Vladimir Dracula |
| Frank Langella | Dracula | Count Dracula | |
| Christopher Lee | Arabian Adventure | Caliph Alquazar | |
| Malcolm McDowell | Time After Time | H. G. Wells | |
| William Shatner | Star Trek: The Motion Picture | James T. Kirk |