Historically, the awards have taken place in late February. In 2023 and 2024, the awards were held in the spring.

Submissions for the seven Outstanding Performance juried awards (Female on camera, Male on camera, Non-Binary/Gender Non-Conforming on camera, GNC or Female Voice, GNC or Male Voice, Youth Voice, Commercial on camera and silent on camera) are open from January 1 to December 31. Submit whenever you see a significant performance by a fellow member that you think is truly outstanding. The submission form can be found here.

The submission period is the period in which you may submit an Outstanding Performance for consideration for the following year’s awards. The submission period is open from January 1 until December 31. The eligibility period is the period in which the production featuring the submitted performance was broadcast for the first time (the first broadcast of the production must have occurred – anywhere in the world and on any platform – within this period). The broadcast date for a production must be publicly verifiable (i.e. on IMDb, a film festival website, streaming platform, etc.). For the 2025 Awards, the eligibility period runs from November 1, 2023, to December 31, 2024. For the 2026 Awards onwards, the eligibility period will run from January 1 to December 31.

You may self-submit your performance or ask a sibling ACTRA Toronto member or your talent agent* to submit you. But be smart about it. The award is for Outstanding Performance. It should be some of the very best work you’ve ever done; you don’t want to waste the jury’s time.

*The submitting agent will be verified as your agent via your profile within ACTRA’s AMS system. Please ensure your agent information on file with ACTRA is current. Please log-in to your AMS profile or contact membership@actratoronto.com to confirm/update.

It must be a principal role, usually a lead, supporting or guest lead role. For commercial on-camera submissions, the role may be Principal or silent on camera. For all other Outstanding Performance submissions, it should have significant screen time if it is for a principal supporting role. A few performers in supporting roles have been nominated in the past, but they tended to be “guest leads.” The jurors understand they are comparing leads to supporting performances, feature-length productions to shorts, TV to film to web series and so on. They try their very best to evaluate each performance on its merits alone. Every year, we are impressed and honoured by the seriousness and integrity with which our jurors approach their work.

No. Staff will ensure any submissions received before the additional categories were announced on Friday, October 4, 2024, are considered in the appropriate category. If you would like confirmation or have any questions, please contact awardsubmissions@actratoronto.com.

Complete the submission form as best you can. If you don't know all the answers, we will assist.

No, you do not need to resubmit! Please email awardsubmissions@actratoronto.com outlining the change(s) that need to be made to your submission. A staff member will make the changes to your submission and resend an auto-confirmation to you with the updated submission.

There is a link to the awards page on the homepage of our website. ACTRA Toronto also posts to social media and sends E-blasts to members reminding them to submit noteworthy performances as soon as they see them through the easy online submission form. You’ll get additional E-blast reminders in the lead-up to the December 31st deadline.

We send E-blasts to all ACTRA Toronto members. Deleting E-mails from ACTRA Toronto or sending them to your junk mail folder means you will not only miss out on updates about the awards, but you also won’t receive information about other fantastic ACTRA Toronto events or your very important voting privileges. Read your ACTRA E-mails. It is a membership requirement to have a valid E-mail address on file with your union.

Over the years, such suggestions have been made/considered and will be again. One of the considerations is to keep the show to a reasonable length.

The expansion of the Outstanding Performance Awards for the 2025 Awards from four to seven categories was determined following input and consultation from the ACTRA Toronto Executive and Council, the ACTRA Toronto outACTRAto Committee, the ACTRA Toronto Gender Diversity Sub-Committee and the ACTRA Toronto Voice Committee. The ACTRA Toronto Awards Committee acknowledges the expansion of the Outstanding Performance Awards by these three categories does not fully represent the composition and diversity of the ACTRA Toronto membership and will take into consideration the addition of other categories for future awards to ensure more equitable representation.

ACTRA Toronto jury coordinators for both the on-camera and voice juries start to recruit jurors after submissions close. ACTRA Toronto members who have previously won or been nominated for an Outstanding Performance award may be asked to be a juror. The jury coordinators also work to ensure the juries are inclusive.

For the on-camera jurors, once the jurors are recruited and screeners obtained for each submitted performance, the eligible submissions are roughly divided equally between the jurors. Each eligible submission is viewed in its entirety by one juror. All juries will then each meet remotely to discuss submissions and decide on the five nominees and ultimately the winner for each Outstanding Performance category.

The voice juries listen to the performances with the screen turned off. This way, voice jurors are only influenced by the artistry of the vocal performance and not by the artistry of the animation or other visuals. One jury decides on the nominees for each voice category (Gender Non-Conforming (GNC) or Female Voice, GNC or Male Voice and Youth Voice) while a second jury selects the winners for each voice category.

With the exception of the two special achievement awards (ACTRA Toronto Award of Excellence, Stunt Award), all award nominees are announced via news release prior to the awards and the winners are announced live at the awards. The two special achievement awards recipients are announced via news release prior to the awards.

Please contact awardsubmissions@actratoronto.com.