All Academy Awards Multiple Winners for Acting

1. Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a ...

4 Oscars

1982: Best Actress in a Leading Role - On Golden Pond 1969: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Lion in Winter 1968: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1934: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Morning Glory + 8 Nominations

2. Meryl Streep

Actress | Out of Africa

Considered by many critics to be the greatest living actress, Meryl Streep has been nominated for the Academy Award an astonishing 21 times, and has won it three times. Meryl was born Mary Louise Streep in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to Mary Wolf (Wilkinson), a commercial artist, and Harry William ...

3 Oscars

2012: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - The Iron Lady 1983: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Sophie's Choice 1980: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Kramer vs. Kramer + 18 Nominations

3. Jack Nicholson

Actor | Chinatown

Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through ...

3 Oscars

1998: Best Actor in a Leading Role - As Good as It Gets 1984: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Terms of Endearment 1976: Best Actor in a Leading Role - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest + 9 Nominations

4. Ingrid Bergman

Actress | Casablanca

Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with ...

3 Oscars

1975: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Murder on the Orient Express 1957: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Anastasia 1945: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Gaslight + 4 Nominations

5. Daniel Day-Lewis

Actor | There Will Be Blood

Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing ...

3 Oscars

2013: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - Lincoln 2008: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - There Will Be Blood 1990: Best Actor in a Leading Role - My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown + 3 Nominations

6. Walter Brennan

Actor | The Westerner

In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...

3 Oscars

1941: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - The Westerner 1939: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Kentucky 1937: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Come and Get It + 1 Nomination

7. Bette Davis

Actress | All About Eve

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but...

2 Oscars

1939: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Jezebel 1936: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Dangerous + 9 Nominations

8. Spencer Tracy

Actor | Judgment at Nuremberg

Spencer Tracy was the second son born on April 5, 1900, to truck salesman John Edward and Caroline Brown Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While attending Marquette Academy, he and classmate Pat O'Brien quit school to enlist in the Navy at the start of World War I. Tracy was still at Norfolk Navy Yard...

2 Oscars

1939: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Boys Town 1938: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Captains Courageous + 7 Nominations

9. Marlon Brando

Actor | Apocalypse Now

Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in ...

2 Oscars

1973: Best Actor in a Leading Role - The Godfather 1955: Best Actor in a Leading Role - On the Waterfront + 6 Nominations

10. Jack Lemmon

Actor | The Apartment

Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers ...

2 Oscars

1974: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Save the Tiger 1956: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Mister Roberts + 6 Nominations

11. Denzel Washington

Actor | Fences

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at ...

2 Oscars

2002: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Training Day 1990: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Glory + 6 Nominations

12. Dustin Hoffman

Actor | Tootsie

Dustin Lee Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California, to Lillian (Gold) and Harry Hoffman, who was a furniture salesman and prop supervisor for Columbia Pictures. He was raised in a Jewish family (from Ukraine, Russia-Poland, and Romania). Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955, ...

2 Oscars

1989: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Rain Man 1980: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Kramer vs. Kramer + 5 Nominations

13. Jane Fonda

Actress | Klute

Born in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario-born New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was ...

2 Oscars

1979: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Coming Home 1972: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Klute + 5 Nominations

14. Robert De Niro

Actor | Cape Fear

One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained ...

2 Oscars

1981: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Raging Bull 1975: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - The Godfather: Part II + 5 Nominations

15. Cate Blanchett

Actress | Carol

Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten ...

2 Oscars

2014: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Blue Jasmine 2005: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role - The Aviator + 5 Nominations

16. Tom Hanks

Producer | Cast Away

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California, to Janet Marylyn (Frager), a hospital worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks, an itinerant cook. His mother's family, originally surnamed "Fraga", was entirely Portuguese, while his father was of mostly English ancestry. Tom grew up in what he has ...

2 Oscars

1995: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Forrest Gump 1994: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Philadelphia + 4 Nominations

17. Jessica Lange

Actress | Tootsie

Jessica Lange was born in 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, where her father worked as a traveling salesman. She obtained a scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota, but instead went to Paris to study drama. She moved to New York, working as a model, until producer Dino De Laurentiis...

2 Oscars

1995: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Blue Sky 1983: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Tootsie + 4 Nominations

18. Maggie Smith

Actress | Gosford Park

One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor ...

2 Oscars

1979: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - California Suite 1970: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie + 4 Nominations

19. Michael Caine

Actor | The Dark Knight

Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of ...

2 Oscars

2000: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - The Cider House Rules 1987: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Hannah and Her Sisters + 4 Nominations

20. Elizabeth Taylor

Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked ...

2 Oscars

1967: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1961: Best Actress in a Leading Role - BUtterfield 8 + 3 Nominations

21. Gary Cooper

Actor | High Noon

Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a ...

2 Oscars

1953: Best Actor in a Leading Role - High Noon 1942: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Sergeant York + 3 Nominations

22. Olivia de Havilland

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her ...

2 Oscars

1950: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Heiress 1947: Best Actress in a Leading Role - To Each His Own + 3 Nominations

23. Fredric March

Actor | Inherit the Wind

Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on. He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination) for his send-up of ...

2 Oscars

1947: Best Actor in a Leading Role - The Best Years of Our Lives 1932: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde + 3 Nominations

24. Sean Penn

Actor | Mystic River

Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.

Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the ...

2 Oscars

2009: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - Milk 2004: Best Actor in a Leading Role - Mystic River + 3 Nominations

25. Frances McDormand

Actress | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Frances Louise McDormand was born on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted by Canadian-born parents Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She ...

2 Oscars

2018: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 1997: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Fargo + 3 Nominations

26. Gene Hackman

Actor | The French Connection

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...

2 Oscars

1993: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Unforgiven 1972: Best Actor in a Leading Role - The French Connection + 3 Nominations

27. Jodie Foster

Actress | The Silence of the Lambs

Jodie Foster started her career at the age of two. For four years she made commercials and finally gave her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). In 1975 Jodie was offered the role of prostitute Iris Steensma in the movie Taxi Driver (1976). This role, for which she received ...

2 Oscars

1992: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Silence of the Lambs 1989: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Accused + 2 Nominations

28. Glenda Jackson

Actress | Women in Love

Few in modern British history have come as far or achieved as much from humble beginnings as Glenda Jackson did. From acclaimed actress to respected MP (Member of Parliament), she was known for her high intelligence and meticulous approach to her work. She was born to a working-class household in ...

2 Oscars

1974: Best Actress in a Leading Role - A Touch of Class 1971: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Women in Love + 2 Nominations

29. Renée Zellweger

Actress | Chicago

Renée Kathleen Zellweger was born on April 25, 1969, in Katy, Texas, Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (Andreassen), is a Norwegian-born former nurse and midwife, of Norwegian, Kven (Finnish), and Swedish descent. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is a Swiss-born engineer. The two married in 1963. Renée ...

2 Oscars

2020: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Judy 2004: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Cold Mountain + 2 Nominations

30. Anthony Quinn

Actor | Alexis Zorbas

Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, ...

2 Oscars

1957: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Lust for Life 1953: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Viva Zapata! + 2 Nominations

31. Shelley Winters

Actress | The Poseidon Adventure

Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St. Louis, Illinois. Her mother, Rose Winter, was born in Missouri, to Austrian Jewish parents, and her father, Jonas Schrift, was an Austrian Jewish immigrant. She had one sibling...

2 Oscars

1966: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - A Patch of Blue 1960: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - The Diary of Anne Frank + 2 Nominations

32. Sally Field

Actress | Forrest Gump

Sally Margaret Field was born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) and salesman Richard Dryden Field. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother then married stuntman Jock Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Princess O'Mahoney. She also has a brother, ...

2 Oscars

1985: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Places in the Heart 1980: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Norma Rae + 1 Nomination

33. Jason Robards

Actor | All the President's Men

Powerful and highly respected American actor Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Hope Maxine (Glanville) and stage and film star Jason Robards Sr. He had Swedish, English, Welsh, German, and Irish ancestry. Robards was raised mostly in Los Angeles. A star athlete at ...

2 Oscars

1978: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Julia 1977: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - All the President's Men + 1 Nomination

34. Peter Ustinov

Actor | Spartacus

Peter Ustinov was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions.

He was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow on April 16, 1921 in Swiss Cottage, ...

2 Oscars

1965: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Topkapi 1961: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Spartacus + 1 Nomination

35. Melvyn Douglas

Actor | Being There

Two-time Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas was one of America's finest actors, and would enjoy cinema immortality if for no other reason than his being the man who made Greta Garbo laugh in Ernst Lubitsch's classic comedy Ninotchka (1939), but he was much, much more.

Melvyn Douglas was born Melvyn Edouard...

2 Oscars

1980: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Being There 1964: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Hud + 1 Nomination

36. Dianne Wiest

Actress | The Birdcage

One of three children (she has two brothers, Greg and Don), Dianne Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA on 28 March 1946. Her original ambition was to be a ballerina, but she was bitten by acting bug after some stage work, most notably playing Desdemona to James Earl Jones' Othello on ...

2 Oscars

1995: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Bullets Over Broadway 1987: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Hannah and Her Sisters + 1 Nomination

37. Luise Rainer

Actress | The Great Ziegfeld

Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a ...

2 Oscars

1938: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Good Earth 1937: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Great Ziegfeld

38. Vivien Leigh

Actress | A Streetcar Named Desire

If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time ...

2 Oscars

1952: Best Actress in a Leading Role - A Streetcar Named Desire 1940: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Gone with the Wind

39. Hilary Swank

Actress | Million Dollar Baby

Hilary was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Judith Kay (Clough), a secretary, and Stephen Michael Swank, who served in the National Guard and was also a traveling salesman. Her maternal grandmother, Frances Martha Dominguez, was of Mexican descent, and her other roots include German, English, and ...

2 Oscars

2005: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role - Million Dollar Baby 2000: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Boys Don't Cry

40. Kevin Spacey

Actor | The Usual Suspects

Kevin Spacey Fowler, better known by his stage name Kevin Spacey, is an American actor of screen and stage, film director, producer, screenwriter and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in...

2 Oscars

2000: Best Actor in a Leading Role - American Beauty 1996: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - The Usual Suspects

41. Helen Hayes

Actress | Airport

Known as "The First lady of the American Theater", Helen Hayes had a legendary career on stage and in films and television that spanned over eighty years. Hayes was born in Washington, D.C., to Catherine Estelle "Essie" Hayes, an actress who worked in touring companies, and Francis van Arnum Brown,...

2 Oscars

1971: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Airport 1932: Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Sin of Madelon Claudet

42. Christoph Waltz

Actor | Django Unchained

Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). For each performance, he won...

2 Oscars

2013: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role - Django Unchained 2010: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role - Inglourious Basterds

43. Mahershala Ali

Actor | Leave the World Behind

Mahershala Ali is fast becoming one of the freshest and most in-demand faces in Hollywood with his extraordinarily diverse skill set and wide-ranging background in film, television, and theater.

He can be seen in the independent feature film, Moonlight, as well as reprising his role in The Hunger ...

2 Oscars

2019: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role - Green Book 2017: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role - Moonlight