Actor: Sean Penn

Sean Penn won Best Actor twice, for Mystic River and Milk, and has been nominated three more times.

Dead Man Walking is the harder performance, playing a condemned man whose guilt the film establishes and whose humanity it insists on regardless.

He has directed five features, including Into the Wild, and has conducted his own journalism in Iraq, Venezuela and Haiti, where he ran a substantial relief operation after the earthquake. The public conduct, including his relationship with the press, has been consistently contentious.