Roberto Benigni is the only actor to win the Best Actor Oscar for a non-English-language performance, earning the award for Life Is Beautiful. He played Guido Orefice, an Italian Jewish father who uses imagination and humor to protect his young son during the Holocaust.
Benigni’s victory came at the 71st Academy Awards in 1999, honoring films released in 1998. Life Is Beautiful also won Best Foreign Language Film—now called Best International Feature Film—and Best Original Dramatic Score. Benigni accepted the film award as director before winning his own acting Oscar later that night.
The wording is easy to misread: other performers have won acting Oscars for roles speaking languages besides English, but those victories came in supporting categories or Best Actress. Benigni’s remains the unique Best Actor case. He was also nominated for directing and original screenplay, making the film’s Oscar showing unusually personal and wide-ranging.