by Marie Antonia Parsons

Created on: December 08, 2009   Last Updated: December 15, 2009

History of the Academy Awards' Best Actress category

The Best Actress Oscar is awarded for the Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.  The first winner was Janet Gaynor in 1929.  The average age of the winners so far has been around age thirty, including Ms. Jessica Tandy at age 80, and Marlee Matlin at age 21. Kate Winslet is the most recent winner in 2009, and is also the youngest actress to receive six nominations in all. The youngest nominee at age 13 (and only Polynesian ever to be nominated, to-date) was Keisha Castle-Hughes for her performance in Whale Rider. None of her subsequent movie performances so far have brought her more nominations.

Brief History of the Awards Ceremony

The first ceremony on May 18, 1929, was not televised and only two hundred seventy people attended.  Winners were announced three months in advance.  For the following year’s awards, the Academy gave an advance list of winners to the newspapers and otherwise kept secret. The winners’ names were to be published after their announcements during the ceremony.  This practice continued until 1940 when the Los Angeles Times published the winners before the ceremony.  The following year, the Academy adopted the sealed-envelope system it still uses today.

Nominations for Best Actress come from only from actresses. All active members of the Academy can then vote in all 25 categories once nominations are completed.

Nominees and Winners

Katharine Hepburn with her four Best Actress Oscars has received the most awards to-date. Ms. Hepburn has said that one of those Oscars was a sympathy vote because Spencer Tracy, her long-time friend, had recently died.  With twelve nominations, she is tied with Meryl Streep. 

While Ms. Streep has received one Best Actress Oscar, she is the most nominated performer in all Acting categories since she was also nominated three times for Best Supporting Actress. Deborah Kerr was nominated six times, the most of any actress without ever winning. Susan Sarandon was nominated three times in four years, two of those in consecutive years, until she finally won for her performance in Dead Man Walking. Singer/performer Cher received one Academy Award for Moonstruck in 1987, although her performance in Mask in 1985 earned her a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress award.

Roles that Win Oscars

These winners have portrayed real-life and historical as well as fictional characters. They have played prostitutes and madams,

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