Female Oscar Winners
With multiple Academy Awards
The film industry remains male dominated today, but female Oscar winners are finally gaining more and more recognition for their talent. Today we take a look at some of the women who have proven this by winning more than one Academy Award in their career. Although these women have had fruitful careers, they are still outnumbered by their male counterparts. Since the Awards began 92 years ago, women have only made up 14% of all nominations, with only 7 for best director. Although this Guardian article is 2 years old, it can help you visualise this gender gap.
Despite the odds, many women have persevered and made a name for themselves in Hollywood. We can only hope that their success will pave the way for more opportunities for female actors in the future. So let’s look at the women who have impressed the industry with their multiple Academy Awards.
Directors
Jane Campion
Campion has always made history for women in film, she is the first and only one of 2 women who have won the Palm D’Or at Cannes Film Festival and is the first and only woman in the Academy Awards’ 92 year history to be nominated twice for Best Director, for The Power of the Dog and The Piano. With 4 total nominations she has won 2, Best Director for The Power of the Dog in 2022 and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for The Piano in 1994.
Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow made history as a female Oscar winner, when she won 2 Awards in the same year for The Hurt Locker in 2010. She won both Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievement in Directing.
Chloé Zhao
Zhao followed in Bigelow’s steps in 2021 when she won Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievement in Directing for Nomadland. Making her the first woman of colour to ever win Best Directing.
Writers
Frances Marion
Marion must have surprised audiences by winning 2 Academy Awards for her writing in the 1930s, when women were yet to be widely recognised for their creative skills. She won Best Writing, Original Story for The Big House in 1930, and then again shorty after in 1932 for The Champ.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
It was many years until another female Oscar winner would take home two awards for her writing. This was Jhabvala in 1987, when she won Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for A Room With A View and then the award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published in 1993 for Howards End.
Costume Design
Jenny Beavan
Beavan has had an extremely successful career as a costume designer for films, with a total of 11 Academy Award nominations. She won 3 of these, making her one of the very few female Oscar winners with more than 2 wins. These were for her costume work on Cruella in 2022, Mad Max: Fury Road in 2016 and A Room with a View in 1987.
Actors
There are many female Oscar winners with 2 wins, so today we will focus on the oscar-winning actors who have won even more than that! A truly impressive list of performers.
Katharine Hepburn
Hepburn is, unsurprisingly, at the top of this list. She is the only female Oscar winner with 4 wins! Not only did she win this many, they were all for Best Actress, no supporting roles, so she kept the audiences impressed throughout the entire films with her performances. Her first win was in 1934 for Morning Glory, followed by Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 1968, The Lion in Winter in 1968 and finally her fourth award in 1982 for On Golden Pond. Her many wins spanned over almost 50 years, making her career incredibly and uniquely successful.
Meryl Streep
Another absolute legend of cinema is, of course, Meryl Streep, who has received the most ever nominations, with a whopping 21! No other nominee has received more than 12. Out of these she has won 3 Oscars. Her first win was in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, for Actress in a Supporting Role, only 3 years later she won Best Actress in a Leading Role for Sophie’s Choice. Her final win was in 2012 for her leading role in The Iron Lady.
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