A list of the last 10 Best Actor winners has sparked a debate about the Oscars

This year’s Academy Awards will take place on 26th April and will definitely be remembered as one of the strangest Oscar ceremonies to date due to the coronavirus pandemic.

David Fincher’s Mank, a biopic about the 1930s Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, is up for the most awards with 10, including Best Actor for Gary Oldman in the titular role.

Also competing for Best Actor are Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal, Anthony Hopkins in The Father, Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Steven Yeun for Minari.

Although the likes of Oldman and Hopkins have previously won the award in their careers the inclusion of Boseman, Yeun and Ahmed definitely give the category a fresher and more diverse feel than previous years.

In fact, a debate has emerged on social media after Fandango, the US movie ticketing service shared a graphic of the last 10 winners of the Best Actor award, which has gone to all-white straight men. The list is as follows:

2011 - Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

2012 - Jean Dujardin - The Artist

2013 - Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln

2014 - Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club

2015 - Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything

2016 - Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant

2017 - Casey Affleck - Manchester by the Sea

2018 - Gary Oldman - The Darkest Hour

2019 - Rami Malek - Bohemian Rhapsody

2020 - Joaquin Phoenix - Joker

Despite the lack of diversity in this list, seven out of the ten won the award for biopics, some of which, from a critical standpoint, aren’t even that memorable.

Daniel Day-Lewis’s win in 2013 was the third time he had won that award, a record for the category. It could also be fair to say that the likes of Oldman and Leonardo DiCaprio have given much better performances than the ones they won for.

Meanwhile, Casey Affleck’s win was marred by a string of historic sexual assault allegations against the actor which came to light before the 2017 ceremony.

However, the question ‘Who’s your favorite Best Actor Oscar-winner of the 2010s?’ sparked a debate in response as people are now realising that these gongs should have probably gone elsewhere.

Even the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, who did win, should have probably been awarded for other roles.

On reflection, were the films even that good?

Perhaps the concept of the all inspiring and captivating leading man is over, especially when you compare it to other categories from the same decade.

That being said, the winners in the 2000s were much richer and more diverse with Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx picking up the gong and only half of the performances being from biopics.

Perhaps this decade will see something much fresher and more exciting from the Oscars – after all, Oldman’s performance in Mank is the only one that isn’t from an original concept.