Emil Jannings, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh (1928)

Other nominee: Richard Barthelmess (The Noose and The Patent Leather Kid)

Warner Baxter, In Old Arizona (1929)

No official nominees were announced in 1929.

George Arliss, Disraeli (1930)

Other nominees: Wallace Beery (The Big House), Maurice Chevalier (The Big Pond), Ronald Colman (Bulldog Drummond), Ronald Colman (Condemned), George Arliss (The Green Goddess), Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade), and Lawrence Tibbett (The Rogue Song)

Lionel Barrymore, A Free Soul (1931)

Other nominees: Richard Dix (Cimarron), Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page), Fredric March (The Royal Family of Broadway), and Jackie Cooper (Skippy)

Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wallace Beery, The Champ (1932)

Other nominee: Alfred Lunt (The Guardsman)

Charles Laughton, The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Other nominees: Leslie Howard (Berkeley Square) and Paul Muni (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang)

Clark Gable, It Happened One Night (1934)

Other nominees: Frank Morgan (The Affairs of Cellini) and William Powell (The Thin Man)