2024 Academy Awards: which actors have won the most Oscars in history?
The 96th Academy Awards are upon us and we look back at some of cinema’s most successful award-winning male actors.
Daniel Day-Lewis’ peers may have breathed a sigh of professional relief when he decided to call time on his acting career after wrapping ‘Phantom Thread’. The infamously selective British-Irish actor only made 12 movies after landing his first Best Actor Oscar for ‘My Left Foot’ in 1990, and he earned another five nominations from those, winning twice more, for ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007) and ‘Lincoln’ (2012). His other three nominations were for ‘In the Name of the Father’ (1994), ‘Gangs of New York’ (2003) and ‘Phantom Thread’ (2018).
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Day-Lewis remains the only actor in history to have earned three Best Actor Academy Awards.
Actors who have picked up two awards in the past:
- Marlon Brando: ‘On the Waterfront’ (1954), ‘The Godfather’ (1972)
- Gary Cooper: ‘Sergeant York’ (1941), ‘High Noon’ (1952)
- Tom Hanks: ‘Philadelphia’ (1993), ‘Forrest Gump’ (1994)
- Dustin Hoffman: ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ (1979), ‘Rain Man’ (1988)
- Anthony Hopkins: ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991), ‘The Father’ (2020)
- Fredric March: ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ (1931), ‘The Best Years of our Lives’ (1946)
- Sean Penn: ‘Mystic River’ (2003), ‘Milk’ (2008)
- Spencer Tracy: ‘Captain Courageous’ (1937), ‘Boys Town’ (1938)
Jack Nicholson has earned 12 nominations in total and has three wins, though not all for Best Actor. He achieved two Oscars for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (1975) and ‘As Good as It Gets’ (1997), as well as a Best Supporting Actor gong in 1983 for ‘Terms of Endearment’ (1983).
Walter Brennan also holds a record for his three wins but all in the Best Supporting Actor category, for ‘Come and Get It’ (1936), ‘Kentucky’ (1938), and ‘The Westerner’ (1940): no other actor or actress in Hollywood history has earned three wins in the supporting category.