How Many Actors Have Won 3 or More Oscars?

Screengrabs from Nomadland, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Lincoln (2020, 1967, 2012)There’s a reason some actors are dubbed “Oscar darlings” in the media and pop culture landscape. These are the individuals who can always be counted on to score Academy Award nominations and wins. Some of these “darlings,” though, have gone on to achieve extremely historic victories with their Oscar wins.

These are the rare performers who have won three or more Academy Award acting Oscars. With this multitude of awards, these performers solidified themselves as legends of their respective eras.This rare breed of performer can be found in a slew of different genres across Hollywood history, not to mention a deluge of varying parts of the film industry’s history.



Binding this eclectic collection of artists, though, is the historic record of having three or more Oscar wins. But just how many actors have achieved this incredible accomplishment?The Select Few Winners of Three or More Acting OscarsThis esteemed group consists of only seven actors. Those seven souls consist of Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Frances McDormand, and Walter Brennan.

Six of those seven firmly won three Oscars, while only Hepburn scored four Oscar victories. This acting legend secured a quartet of Best Actress Oscar trophies spanning 50 years of cinema history: 1933’s Morning Glory, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1968’s The Lion in Winter, and finally, 1981’s On Golden Pond.Meanwhile, the very first actor to win three acting Oscars was Walter Brennan, someone who might not be a household name today.

However, in the 1930s and early ’40s, Brennan was a character actor force to be reckoned with. The Best Supporting Actor category was utterly dominated by this man from 1937 to 1941. His early Oscar wins were also allegedly (per the Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza book The Academy Awards: The Complete History of the Oscars) bolstered by extreme support from thousands of extras voting for the Oscars in the ’30s.

However, the enduring praise surrounding his performances in movies like The Westerner demonstrates that Brennan also had acclaim and talent driving his wins.After Brennan’s trio of wins, it would take until Hepburn’s The Lion in Winter win in 1969 for another actor to win three Oscars. The most recent instances of actors scoring their third Oscar acting wins include Daniel Day-Lewis (for Lincoln) and McDormand (for Nomadland).

It’s surprising, in hindsight, that it took Streep (who currently has 21 acting Oscar nominations to her name) until 2011’s The Iron Lady to win three Oscars. Leave it to the Academy Awards to drop another surprise.[RELATED: The First Stunt Oscar Could Go to One of These Marvel or DC Movies]Are There Any Common Patterns Across These Performers?Some aspiring actors may comb through these Oscar-winning performances hoping to find some sort of recurring motif or latent formula for conjuring up revered acting turns.

Unfortunately for those souls, there are shockingly few commonalities across these performances. Some of these wins (like Day-Lewis in There Will be Blood and Lincoln or Hepburn in The Lion in Winter) are period piece performances, but others are decidedly set in the modern world. Some of these multiple Oscar wins involve inhabiting historical figures, but many (like McDormand’s three Oscar-winning characters) are original creations.

Even genres don’t necessarily explain what is “guaranteed” to win an Oscar since more comedic performances like Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment or As Good as It Gets can get Oscar glory. It truly is the luck of the draw, a common phenomenon across most Oscar ceremonies. The closest thing to a real “clincher” in getting three or more Oscars may simply be being a living legend in the film industry.

A handful of these victories that got actors into this esteemed club (namely Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express) certainly, whether intentionally or not, feel like “legacy” wins, celebrating an entire career rather than one standout performance.Examining these seven rare actors who won three or more Oscars is an opportunity to examine a very select breed of artists who really resonated with Oscar voters and audiences alike. It’s also a chance to appreciate folks like Walter Brennan and Katharine Hepburn, who might now be on the lips of movie geeks under the age of 25.

If you think their Oscar accomplishments are impressive, just wait until you see their respective chops. Plus, it can sometimes be fun to imagine which actors may someday join this rarified group. Denzel Washington, Cate Blanchett, and Tom Hanks, for instance, each have two Oscar wins and feel like they could easily become part of this legendary clique.

Lincoln is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.The post How Many Actors Have Won 3 or More Oscars? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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