The Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actor was awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television from 1980 to 1983, for the best performance by non-Canadian actor in a Canadian film. The award and its Foreign Actress companion were frequently criticized both by actors and film critics — Canadian actor Christopher Plummer criticized the distinction in his Best Actor acceptance speech at the first Genies ceremony, and Jay Scott called them "loathsome", dubbing them "the Colonial Category", in a 1982 article in The Globe and Mail.