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Silver Bear for Best Actor winners

  • James StewartJames Stewart gave his Oscar to his father for the shop window.
  • Samuel L. JacksonSamuel L. Jackson learned to cope with a childhood stutter by pretending to be other people.
  • Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprio owes his first name to a kick. His pregnant mother felt the baby move while she stood before a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy. That child grew up to be an American actor and film…
  • Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds to play a dying lawyer in Philadelphia. He thinned his hair and learned to walk differently.
  • Denzel WashingtonIn 2025, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the actor Denzel Washington said that the emphasis in his first name belongs on the first syllable. His mother had moved it to the second syllable so that young Denzel would answer to her call and not his…
  • Gene HackmanGene Hackman, born Eugene Allen Hackman, once received the lowest score the Pasadena Playhouse had ever given a student. His classmates already treated him and his friend Dustin Hoffman as outsiders. They voted the two of them the least…
  • Sam RockwellSam Rockwell won an Oscar for playing a racist, bullying police deputy. He delivered burritos by bicycle first.
  • Sean PennIn Kyiv in November 2022, Sean Penn handed an Oscar statuette to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "This is for you. It's just a symbolic silly thing...When you win, bring it back to Malibu." That was the whole speech. Penn is an…
  • Paul NewmanAt the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona, Paul Newman was 70 years and eight days old, and his team won its class. That made him the oldest driver to date on a winning team in a major sanctioned race. Newman was best known as a film star, and he…
  • Benicio del ToroBenicio del Toro gained more than 40 pounds for one film role and lost 35 pounds for another.
  • Stellan SkarsgårdStellan Skarsgård won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in 2026 for playing Gustav Borg in the film Sentimental Value. Borg is a filmmaker whose fame belongs to the past. The same performance earned the Swedish actor an Academy…

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