The Empire Award for Best Actor is one of the Empire Awards presented annually by Empire magazine to actors working in the motion picture industry. The Empire Award for Best Actor is one of six ongoing awards that have been handed out since the establishment of the Empire Awards in 1996 (the others being Best Film, Best British Film, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Newcomer). The winners are chosen each year by readers of Empire magazine.

In the list below, winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees. The number of the ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article (if any) on that ceremony.

Best Actor may refer to:

An Empire Award is an accolade bestowed by Empire, Britain's biggest selling film magazine, to recognize excellence of professionals in the local and global film industry. The awards are voted for by readers of the magazine and in an annual ceremony, the Empire Awards, the winners are presented with the award which is covered by Empire and sometimes also televised. They were sponsored by Sony Ericsson between the 8th and the 13th Empire Awards with the exception of the 12th which was without a ceremony, and since the 14th Empire Awards are sponsored by Jameson Irish Whiskey.

The first Empire Awards ceremony was held on 1996, to honour outstanding film achievements of the 1995 film season. The most recent ceremony, honouring films in 2011, was held at Grosvenor House Hotel on March 25, 2012.

James Andrew McAvoy ( /ˈmækəvɔɪ/ MAK-ə-voi; born (1979-04-21)21 April 1979) is a Scottish stage and screen actor. He made his acting debut as a teen in 1995's The Near Room and continued to make mostly television appearances until the early 2000s. His notable television work includes State of Play, Shameless, and Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. Besides screen acting, McAvoy has appeared on stage with Three Days of Rain in 2009, and in 2011 he did voice work for animated films including Gnomeo & Juliet and Arthur Christmas.

Starting in 2003, McAvoy began to build his film resume with Bollywood Queen. That film was followed with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), a commercial hit. His performance in Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland achieved him not only critical praise, but several award nominations. 2007's critically acclaimed Atonement marked the breakthrough in McAvoy's career. It also earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination and his second BAFTA nomination. Another big point in the actor's career was starring in Wanted (2008). Since then, he is notable for playing Charles Xavier in the 2011 superhero film X-Men: First Class.

Martin John C. Freeman (born 8 September 1971) is an English actor. He is known for his roles as Tim Canterbury in the BBC's Golden Globe-winning comedy The Office, John in Love Actually, Arthur Dent in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Watson in Sherlock and Paul Maddens in Nativity!. He has been cast in the lead role of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's two-part adaptation of The Hobbit.

Martin Freeman was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the youngest of five children. His father, Geoffrey, a naval officer, and his mother, Philomena separated when Freeman was a child, and when Freeman was ten, Geoffrey died of a heart attack. Freeman was raised Roman Catholic. As a child, Freeman was asthmatic, and had to undergo a hip operation due to a "dodgy" leg. He was schooled at a Catholic comprehensive before attending London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

In an edition of Who Do You Think You Are? aired on 19 August 2009, he discovered that his grandfather, Leonard Freeman, was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II. Private L W Freeman, a Territorial Army volunteer in the 150(N) Field Ambulance Regiment, was killed in Northern France on 24 May 1940 in a Stuka dawn attack. His unit was evacuated from Dunkirk two days later.