José Ferrer as Cyrano de Bergerac in The Philco Television Playhouse in 1949, Maximilian Schell as Hans Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg, a role he created in a Playhouse 90 episode, and Cliff Roberston in Charly, a role he created in the TV presentation The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon.

Ferrer first played Cyrano on Broadway in 1946, co-winning the first Best Actor Tony ever awarded along with Fredric March in the play Years Ago. He retruned to the part onstage at the New York City Center in 1953 and on television for Producers' Showcase in 1955 (receiving Emmy nominations for both TV appearances). Schell later performed on Broadway in a stage version of Judgment at Nuremberg, but this time in the role of Ernst Janning, which was played by Burt Lancaster in the film and Paul Lukas in the television version.

Other Oscar-winning roles first played on television include the title role in Marty (played in the film by Ernest Borgnine and on TV by Rod Steiger) and Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (which won Oscars for Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft after being created on the small screen by Teresa Wright and Patty McCormack). Hamlet was also televised before winning the Best Actor Oscar for Laurence Olivier in 1948, with the BBC broadcasting a 2-part version starring John Byron as the Melancholy Dane in December of 1947.

Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar for playing Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive, which was loosely based on the 1960s TV series of the same name. But in the TV show, Gerard (played by Barry Morse) was a police lieutenant named Philip.