Academy Award for Best Actress

The Best Actress award has been presented 98 times, to 81 different actresses. The first winner was Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), and the most recent winner is Jessie Buckley for her portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet (2025). The record for most wins is four, held by Katharine Hepburn; Frances McDormand has won three times, and thirteen other actresses have won the award twice. Meryl Streep has received the most nominations in the category—seventeen—and has won twice. At the 41st Academy Awards in 1969, Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn received the same number of votes and so shared the award, the only time this has occurred.

Nominations process

Nominees are currently determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy.

In the first three years of the awards, actors and actresses were nominated as the best individuals in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. Despite this, at the 3rd Academy Awards, held in 1930, only one film was cited in each winner's award regardless of how many they were eligible to be considered for during that span. The current system, in which an actress is nominated for a specific performance in a single film, was introduced for the 4th Academy Awards. Starting with the 9th Academy Awards, held in 1937, the category was limited to a maximum five nominations per year.

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Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months, from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

The following individuals won two or more Academy Awards for Best Actress:

The following individuals received three or more Best Actress nominations:

Age superlatives

Films with multiple Leading Actress nominations

Winners are in bold.

All About Eve (1950) – Anne Baxter and Bette Davis
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) – Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor
The Turning Point (1977) – Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine
Terms of Endearment (1983) – Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger
Thelma & Louise (1991) – Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon

Multiple character nominations

The following were nominated for their portrayals of the same fictional or non-fictional character in separate films (including variations of the original).

Billie Holiday from Lady Sings the Blues (Diana Ross, 1972) and The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Andra Day, 2021)
Josephine "Jo" March from Little Women (Winona Ryder, 1994) and Little Women (Saoirse Ronan, 2019)
Leslie Crosbie from The Letter (Jeanne Eagels, 1929) and The Letter (Bette Davis, 1940)
Marilyn Monroe from My Week with Marilyn (Michelle Williams, 2011) and Blonde (Ana de Armas, 2022)
Queen Elizabeth I from Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett, 1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Cate Blanchett, 2007)
Vicki Lester (née Esther (Victoria) Blodgett) from A Star Is Born (Janet Gaynor, 1937) and A Star Is Born (Judy Garland, 1954)
- Ally Maine (née Campano) from A Star Is Born (Lady Gaga, 2018)