Actors with the most Oscar nominations and their wins 1929-2024

As of March 2023, Meryl Streep was the person with the most Oscar nominations of all time, with an impressive 21 nominations and three wins. Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003) received 12 nominations but took home one more Academy Award than Streep throughout her acting career.

It is an honor just to be nominated

Over the past nine decades, numerous actors and filmmakers have been nominated for an Academy Award. While nominees such as Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, and Lupita Nyong'o struck it lucky and won an award with their first nomination, others have been waiting for years to finally hold their acceptance speech on stage. As of 2022, Glenn Close and Peter O'Toole topped the ranking for the most nominations in an acting category without a win. Another interesting imbalance can be found when looking at the movies with the most Oscar nominations and wins: James Cameron's "Titanic" (1997), for example, received 11 awards out of 14 nominations, whereas "The Power of the Dog" (2021) only scored one trophy out of 12 nominations.

Diversity at the Academy Awards

Even though four out of the seven actors with the most Oscar wins were women, female representation at the Academy Awards remains a much-discussed issue. Records show that women accounted for less than 35 percent of non-acting nominees in 2021, and while this share has gradually increased over the years, progress has been slow. In addition to gender imbalances, the voting body of the Oscars – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – has also been facing widespread criticism for lack of diversity and failing to recognize the work of people of color and other under-represented groups.