Academy Award for best actress | Winners, Years, List, & Facts (original) (raw)
Academy Award for best actress, award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California. It honours the actress in a leading role who delivered the most outstanding performance in a movie of a given year, as determined by the academy’s voting members. The prize was first presented in 1929 at the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony, and it recognized work in films from 1927–28. It was not until 1935, at the seventh ceremony, that only performances in movies released the previous year were eligible for consideration. The winning actress is given a gold-plated statuette known as an Oscar.
Katharine Hepburn has won the most Academy Awards for best actress (four), and Frances McDormand has received three. A number of actresses have earned two awards, notably Meryl Streep, who holds the record for the most nominations in the category (17). Below is a list of the winning actresses and the movies for which they won. The year is when the award was presented.
1929 and 1930s
- 1929: Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven [1927], Street Angel [1928], Sunrise [1927])
- 1933: Helen Hayes (The Sin of Madelon Claudet [1931])
- (All subsequent movies were released the previous year.)
1940s and 1950s
1960s and 1970s
- 1970: Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
- 1975: Ellen Burstyn (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore)
1980s and 1990s
- 1988: Cher (Moonstruck)
2000s and 2010s
2020s
- 2023: Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.