Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play

The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play was an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre across collective Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. The award was one of eight new acting awards first presented in 1975, when Drama Desk retired an earlier award that had made no distinction between work in plays and musicals, nor between actors and actresses, nor between lead performers and featured performers.

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor
Awarded for	Outstanding Actor in a Play
Location	New York City
Country	United States
Presented by	Drama Desk
First awarded	1975
Last awarded	2022
Website	dramadesk.org (defunct)

After the 2022 ceremony, all eight acting categories introduced in 1975 were retired. The award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, along with Outstanding Actress in a Play, were replaced in 2023 with the gender neutral category of Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play.

Winners and nominees

1970s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
1975
	Anthony Hopkins	Equus	Dysart
	Roy Dotrice	Brief Lives	John Aubrey
	Peter Firth	Equus	Alan Strang
	Charles Grodin	Same Time, Next Year	George
	John Kani	Sizwe Banzi Is Dead	Styles / Buntu
		The Island	John
	Alec McCowen	The Misanthrope	Alceste
	Richard Monette	Hosanna	Hosanna
	Tony Musante	P.S. Your Cat Is Dead	Vito
	Winston Ntshona	The Island	Winston
	Donald Sinden	London Assurance	Sir Harcourt Courtly
1976
	John Wood	Travesties	Henry Carr
	Peter Evans	Streamers	Richie
	Ben Gazzara	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	George
	Richard Kiley	The Heiress	Dr. Austin Sloper
	Frank Quinn	Lamppost Reunion	Mac
	Louis Zorich	They Knew What They Wanted	Tony
1977
	Al Pacino	The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel	Pavlo Hummel
	Martin Balsam	Cold Storage	Joseph Parmigian
	Richard Chamberlain	The Night of the Iguana	Rev. Shannon
	Tom Courtenay	Otherwise Engaged	Simon
	Robert Duvall	American Buffalo	Walter Cole
	Fred Gwynne	A Texas Trilogy	Colonel J. C. Kinkaid
	John Heard	G.R. Point	Micah
	Jonathan Pryce	Comedians	Gethin Price
1978
	Barnard Hughes	Da	Da
	Hume Cronyn	The Gin Game	Weller Martin
	Judd Hirsch	Chapter Two	George
	James Earl Jones	Paul Robeson	Paul Robeson
	Frank Langella	Dracula	Dracula
	Brian Murray	Da	Charlie Now
1979
	Philip Anglim	The Elephant Man	John Merrick
	Tom Aldredge	On Golden Pond	Norman Thayer Jr.
	Richard Chamberlain	Fathers and Sons	Wild Bill Hickok
	Tom Conti	Whose Life is It Anyway?	Ken Harrison
	Donal Donnelly	Faith Healer	Frank Hardy
	Jack Lemmon	Tribute	Scottie Templeton

1980s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
1980
	John Rubinstein	Children of a Lesser God	James Leeds
	F. Murray Abraham	Teibele and Her Demon	Alchonon
	Philip Bosco	Major Barbara	Andrew Undershaft
	Charles Brown	Home	Cephus Miles
	Gerald Hiken	Strider	Strider
	Judd Hirsch	Talley's Folly	Matt Friedman
1981
	Ian McKellen	Amadeus	Antonio Salieri
	Tim Curry	Amadeus	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
	John Heard	The Chekhov Sketchbook	Various Characters
	Derek Jacobi	The Suicide	Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov
	Milo O'Shea	Mass Appeal	Tim Farley
	Remak Ramsay	The Winslow Boy	Sir Robert Morton
1982
	Christopher Plummer	Othello	Iago
	Bob Gunton	How I Got That Story	The Historical Event
	Zakes Mokae	"Master Harold"...and the Boys	Sam
	Paul Rogers	The Dresser	Sir
	Robert Stattel	King Lear	Edgar
1983
	Harvey Fierstein	Torch Song Trilogy	Arnold Beckoff
	Matthew Broderick	Torch Song Trilogy	David
	Jeff Daniels	Johnny Got His Gun	Joe Bonham
	John Malkovich	True West	Lee
	Remak Ramsay	Quartermaine's Terms	St. John Quartermaine
	John Rubinstein	The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial	Barney Greenwald
	James Russo	Extremities	Raul
1984
	Dustin Hoffman	Death of a Salesman	Willy Loman
	Rex Harrison	Heartbreak House	Captain Shotover
	Jeremy Irons	The Real Thing	Henry
	David McCallum	The Philanthropist	Philip
	Donald Moffat	Play Memory	Cam MacMillan
	Al Pacino	American Buffalo	Walter Cole
1985
	John Lithgow	Requiem for a Heavyweight	Harlan "Mountain" McClintock
	Jim Dale	A Day in the Death of Joe Egg	Bri
	Anthony Heald	Digby	Digby Merton
		The Foreigner	Charlie
	Jonathan Hogan	As Is	Rich
	Derek Jacobi	Cyrano de Bergerac	Cyrano de Bergerac
		Much Ado About Nothing	Benedick
	Patrick McGoohan	Pack of Lies	Stewart
	Jonathan Pryce	Accidental Death of an Anarchist	The Fool
1986
	Ed Harris	Precious Sons	Fred
	Jeff Daniels	Lemon Sky	Alan
	Kevin Kline	Hamlet	Prince Hamlet
	Jack Lemmon	Long Day's Journey into Night	James Tyrone, Sr.
	John Mahoney	The House of Blue Leaves	Artie Shaughnessy
	Roshan Seth	A Map of the World	Victor Mehta
1987
	James Earl Jones	Fences	Troy Maxson
	Don Bloomfield	Lily Dale	Horace Robedaux
	Morgan Freeman	Driving Miss Daisy	Hoke Coleburn
	Victor Garber	You Never Can Tell	Dr. Valentine
	Ian McKellen	Wild Honey	Mikhail Platonov
	Alan Rickman	Les Liaisons Dangereuses	Le Vicomte de Valmont
1988
	Ron Silver	Speed-the-Plow	Charlie Fox
	Derek Jacobi	Breaking the Code	Alan Turing
	Delroy Lindo	Joe Turner's Come and Gone	Herald Loomis
	John Lithgow	M. Butterfly	Rene Gallimard
	John Malkovich	Burn This	Pale
	Joe Mantegna	Speed-the-Plow	Gould
1989
	Philip Bosco	Lend Me a Tenor	Saunders
	Mikhail Baryshnikov	Metamorphosis	Gregor Samsa
	Niall Buggy	Aristocrats	Casimir
	Peter Friedman	The Heidi Chronicles	Scoop
	John Kavanagh	Juno and the Paycock	Joxer Daly
	Stephen McHattie	Ghetto	Kittel
	Paul Provenza	Only Kidding!	Jerry Goldstein

1990s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
1990
	Nathan Lane	The Lisbon Traviata	Mendy
	Alec Baldwin	Prelude to a Kiss	Peter Hoskins
	Charles S. Dutton	The Piano Lesson	Boy Willie
	Gary Sinise	The Grapes of Wrath	Tom Joad
	Colin Stinton	Some Americans Abroad	Joe Taylor
1991
	Ron Rifkin	The Substance of Fire	Isaac Geldhart
	Kevin Kline	Hamlet	Prince Hamlet
	Tom McGowan	La Bête	Valere
	Sab Shimono	The Wash	Sadao
1992
	Brian Bedford	Two Shakespearean Actors	William Charles Macready
	F. Murray Abraham	A Life in the Theatre	Robert
	Dennis Boutsikaris	Sight Unseen	Jonathan
	James McDaniel	Before it Hits Home	Wendall
	Brian Murray	A Small Family Business	Jack McCracken
1993
	Ron Leibman	Angels in America	Roy Cohn, et al.
	John Cameron Mitchell	The Destiny of Me	Alexander
	Denis O'Hare	Hauptmann	Richard Hauptmann
	Everett Quinton	Brother Truckers	Lyla Balskin
	Ron Rifkin	Three Hotels	Kenneth Hoyle
1994
	Brian Bedford	Timon of Athens	Timon
	Stacy Keach	The Kentucky Cycle	Various Characters
	Christopher Plummer	No Man's Land	Spooner
	Stephen Spinella	Angels in America: Perestroika	Prior Walter
	Sam Waterston	Abe Lincoln in Illinois	Abraham Lincoln
1995
	Ralph Fiennes	Hamlet	Prince Hamlet
	Tom Aldredge	Incommunicado	Ezra Pound
	Philip Bosco	The Heiress	Dr. Austin Sloper
	Philip Goodwin	Henry VI	Henry VI of England
	Ron Leibman	The Merchant of Venice	Shylock
	Roger Rees	Indiscretions	George
1996
	Frank Langella	The Father	The Captain
	Gerry Bamman	Nixon's Nixon	Richard M. Nixon
	George Grizzard	A Delicate Balance	Tobias
	Mark Nelson	Picasso at the Lapin Agile	Albert Einstein
	Rocco Sisto	Quills	The Marquis
	Patrick Stewart	The Tempest	Prospero
1997
	David Morse	How I Learned to Drive	Uncle Peck
	Christopher Plummer	Barrymore	John Barrymore
	Michael Gambon	Skylight	Tom Sergeant
	Frank Langella	Present Laughter	Garry
	Daniel Massey	Taking Sides	Wilhelm Furtwängler
	Donal McCann	The Steward of Christendom	Thomas Dunne
1998
	Anthony LaPaglia	A View from the Bridge	Eddie Carbone
	Jason Bowcutt	Never the Sinner	Nathan Leopold
	Richard Briers	The Chairs	Old Man
	Brian Cox	St. Nicholas	Performer
	John Slattery	Three Days of Rain	Walker
	Eli Wallach	Visiting Mr. Green	Mr. Green
1999
	Brian Dennehy	Death of a Salesman	Willy Loman
	Scott Glenn	Killer Joe	Killer Joe Cooper
	Finbar Lynch	Not About Nightingales	Canary Jim
	Corin Redgrave	Not About Nightingales	Bert "Boss" Whalen
	Toby Stephens	Ring Round the Moon	Hugo / Frederick
	Patrick Stewart	The Ride Down Mt. Morgan	Lyman Felt

2000s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
2000
	Stephen Dillane	The Real Thing	Henry
	Gabriel Byrne	A Moon for the Misbegotten	James Tyrone, Jr.
	Kevin Chamberlin	Dirty Blonde	Charlie
	Philip Seymour Hoffman	True West	Austin (Alternated with Lee)
	Derek Jacobi	Uncle Vanya	Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky
	Paul Sparks	Coyote on a Fence	Robert Alvin "Bobby" Reyburn
2001
	Richard Easton	The Invention of Love	A.E. Housman
	Alan Bates	The Unexpected Man	The Man
	Ralph Fiennes	Richard II	Richard II of England
	Brian Stokes Mitchell	King Hedley II	King
	John Ortiz	Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train	Angel Cruz
	Liev Schreiber	Betrayal	Jerry
2002
	Alan Bates	Fortune's Fool	Vassily Semyonitch Kuzovkin
	Liam Neeson	The Crucible	John Proctor
	Bill Pullman	The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?	Martin Gray
	Alan Rickman	Private Lives	Elyot Chase
	Dallas Roberts	Nocturne	The Son
	Jeffrey Wright	Topdog/Underdog	Lincoln
2003
	Eddie Izzard	A Day in the Death of Joe Egg	Bri
	Simon Russell Beale	Uncle Vanya	Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky
	Norbert Leo Butz	Buicks	Bill
	Jim Dale	Comedians	Eddie Waters
	Brian Dennehy	Long Day's Journey into Night	James Tyrone, Sr.
	Daniel Sunjata	Take Me Out	Darren Lemming
2004
	Kevin Kline	Henry IV	Sir John Falstaff
	John Michael Higgins	Big Bill	Bill Tilden
	Frank Langella	Match	Tobi
	Brían F. O'Byrne	Frozen	Ralph
	Christopher Plummer	King Lear	King Lear
	Paul Sparks	Blackbird	Baylis
2005
	Brían F. O'Byrne	Doubt	Father Flynn
	Adam Arkin	Brooklyn Boy	Eric Weiss
	John Cullum	Sin (A Cardinal Deposed)	Cardinal Bernard Law
	Bill Irwin	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	George
	Jeremy Piven	Fat Pig	Tom
	John Turturro	Souls of Naples	Pasquale
2006
	Richard Griffiths	The History Boys	Hector
	Vince Gatton	Candy & Dorothy	Candy
	John Glover	The Paris Letter	Anton Kilgallen
	Željko Ivanek	The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial	Lt. Com. Phillip Francis Queeg
	Nathan Lane	Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams	Lou Nuncle
	Brían F. O'Byrne	Shining City	Ian
2007
	Frank Langella	Frost/Nixon	Richard Nixon
	Brían F. O'Byrne	The Coast of Utopia: Voyage	Alexander Herzen
	Christopher Plummer	Inherit the Wind	Henry Drummond
	Philip Seymour Hoffman	Jack Goes Boating	Jack
	Liev Schreiber	Talk Radio	Barry Champlain
	Kevin Spacey	A Moon for the Misbegotten	James Tyrone, Jr.
	Paul Sparks	Essential Self-Defense	Yul Carroll
2008
	Mark Rylance	Boeing-Boeing	Robert
	Bill Champion	Intimate Exchanges	Toby
	Kevin Kline	Cyrano de Bergerac	Cyrano de Bergerac
	Bill Pullman	Peter & Jerry	Peter
	Tobias Segal	From Up Here	Kenny Barrett
	Rufus Sewell	Rock 'n' Roll	Jan
2009
	Geoffrey Rush	Exit the King	King Berenger
	Simon Russell Beale	The Winter's Tale	Leontes
	Reed Birney	Blasted	Ian
	Raúl Esparza	Speed-the-Plow	Charlie Fox
	Bill Irwin	Waiting for Godot	Lucky
	Daniel Radcliffe	Equus	Alan Strang
	Thomas Sadoski	reasons to be pretty	Greg

2010s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
2010
	Liev Schreiber	A View from the Bridge	Eddie Carbone
	Bill Heck	The Orphans' Home Cycle	Various Characters
	Jude Law	Hamlet	Hamlet
	Alfred Molina	Red	Mark Rothko
	Eddie Redmayne		Ken
	John Douglas Thompson	The Emperor Jones	Jones
	Christopher Walken	A Behanding in Spokane	Carmichael
2011
	Bobby Cannavale	The Motherfucker With the Hat	Jackie
	Charles Busch	The Divine Sister	Mother Superior
	Al Pacino	The Merchant of Venice	Shylock
	Geoffrey Rush	The Diary of a Madman	Poprishchin
	Mark Rylance	Jerusalem	Johnny "Rooster" Byron
	Michael Shannon	Mistakes Were Made	Felix Artifex
	Paul Sparks	Dusk Rings a Bell	Ray
2012
	James Corden	One Man, Two Guvnors	Francis Henshall
	Hugh Dancy	Venus in Fur	Thomas
	Claybourne Elder	One Arm	Ollie
	Santino Fontana	Sons of the Prophet	Joseph
	Joseph Franchini	The Navigator	Dave
	Philip Seymour Hoffman	Death of a Salesman	Willy Loman
	Kevin Spacey	Richard III	Richard III of England
2013
	Tracy Letts	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	George
	Reed Birney	Uncle Vanya	Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky
	Daniel Everidge	Falling	Performer
	Tom Hanks	Lucky Guy	Mike McAlary
	Shuler Hensley	The Whale	Charlie
	Nathan Lane	The Nance	Chauncey
2014
	Bryan Cranston	All the Way	President Lyndon B. Johnson
	Hamish Linklater	The Comedy of Errors	Antipholus
	Ian McKellen	No Man's Land	Spooner
	David Morse	The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin	Tom Durnin
	Chris O'Dowd	Of Mice and Men	Lennie Small
	Daniel Radcliffe	The Cripple of Inishmaan	Cripple Billy
	Denzel Washington	A Raisin in the Sun	Walter Lee Younger
2015
	Alex Sharp	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Christopher Boone
	Reed Birney	I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard	David
	Bradley Cooper	The Elephant Man	John Merrick
	Stephen McKinley Henderson	Between Riverside and Crazy	Walter 'Pops' Washington
	Ben Miles	Wolf Hall Parts One & Two	Thomas Cromwell
	Bill Pullman	Sticks and Bones	David
2016
	Frank Langella	The Father	André
	Andrew Garman	The Christians	Pastor Paul
	Avi Hoffman	Death of a Salesman	Willy Loman
	Tim Pigott-Smith	King Charles III	Charles, Prince of Wales
	Mark Strong	A View from the Bridge	Eddie Carbone
2017
	Kevin Kline	Present Laughter	Garry Essendine
	Bobby Cannavale	The Hairy Ape	Robert "Yank" Smith
	Daniel Craig	Othello	Iago
	David Hyde Pierce	A Life	Nate Martin
	John Douglas Thompson	Jitney	Jim Becker
2018
	Andrew Garfield	Angels in America	Prior Walter
	Johnny Flynn	Hangmen	Mooney
	Tom Hollander	Travesties	Henry Carr
	James McArdle	Angels in America	Louis Ironson
	Paul Sparks	Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo	Jerry
2019
	Jay O. Sanders	Uncle Vanya	Vanya
	Jeff Biehl	Life Sucks	Vanya
	Edmund Donovan	Lewiston/Clarkston	Chris
	Raúl Esparza	The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui	Arturo Ui
	Russell Harvard	I Was Most Alive With You	Knox

2020s

Year	Actor	Play	Character
2020
	Edmund Donovan	Greater Clements	Joe
	Charles Busch	The Confession of Lily Dare	Lily Dare
	Raúl Esparza	Seared	Harry
	Francis Jue	Cambodian Rock Band	Duch
	Triney Sandoval	72 Miles to Go...	Billy
	Kyle Soller	The Inheritance	Eric Glass
2021	No awards: New York theatres shuttered, March 2020 to September 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City[1]
2022
	Ruben Santiago-Hudson	Lackawanna Blues	Various
	Brandon J. Dirden	Skeleton Crew	Reggie
	Jesse Tyler Ferguson	Take Me Out	Mason Marzac
	Jacob Ming-Trent	Merry Wives	Falstaff
	John Douglas Thompson	The Merchant of Venice	Shylock

Multiple wins

3 wins

• Frank Langella

2 wins

• Brian Bedford
• Kevin Kline
• Christopher Plummer

See also

• Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor
• Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play

References

1. Evans, Greg (2021-05-05). "Broadway To Reopen Sept. 14, Says Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Broadway League "Cautiously Optimistic"". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 2023-06-02. Retrieved 2023-12-03.

External links