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Winning an Oscar is the highest award any actress can get. Winning one is a huge honor in itself, but throughout the history of cinema, there have been cases when a certain actress managed to win more than one Academy Award. The list of the most successful actresses includes a lot of well-known, beloved names.
Not all of them are still active to this day, but regardless of that, they have greatly influenced the world of movies and left their mark on it. Among all the actresses that the Academy has honored over the years, these ladies have won the highest numbers of Oscars in history.
7 Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett is one of the few people who can say that they won an Oscar for portraying an actress. And she didn't just play any actress, but the most successful Oscar winner of all time — Katharine Hepburn. She portrayed Hepburn in the 2004 movie The Aviator, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.
Blanchett scored another Oscar for her strong performance as Jasmine in the Woody Allen bitter drama Blue Jasmine (2013). She has been nominated seven times so far, and with her ability to take on and perfectly execute demanding roles, it's likely that further Oscar nominations are in store for her in the future.
6 Maggie Smith
Younger audiences might best know Maggie Smith for her portrayal of professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series, but the British actress has been working professionally since the 1960s and amassed many well-accepted roles over the course of her career. She was nominated for an Oscar six times and won two of them.
Smith received her first Oscar for the drama movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) about an unconventional teacher and her relationships with her pupils and the people around her. Her second Oscar was for the comedy movie California Suite (1979), about a group of people who meet in a hotel and all experience different adventures. Smith remains active to this day, and in 2022, two of her new movies are set to premiere, one of which is a sequel to the popular British TV series Downton Abbey.
5 Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh is one of the legends of the Old Hollywood who appeared in one of the most iconic movies of the time. Leigh played the leading part of Scarlett O'Hara in the romance/historical epic movie Gone With the Wind (1939) alongside Clark Gable.
Her second Oscar was for an equally challenging role. In the drama A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), based on the stage play of the same name, Leigh stars opposite Marlon Brando as Blanche DuBois, a woman who arrives to her sister's home to start a new life for herself but clashes with her sister's husband Stanley.
4 Hilary Swank
Though Hilary Swank has appeared in many movies of different genres, both of her Oscar nominations and wins belong in the drama genre. The first one was for the 1999 movie Boys Don't Cry, inspired by real events. Swank received her second Oscar for the box drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), which was directed by Clint Eastwood.
What both of these movies have in common is Swank's hero doesn't have a happy ending. Swank hasn't been nominated since, but she continues to star in high-quality projects, most recently in the science fiction series Away.
3 Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep is one of the living legends of Hollywood, universally hailed as one of the greatest actresses who has ever lived. Streep has been nominated for record-breaking 21 Academy Awards for her work and has won three of them, in 1980, 1982 and 2012. Her first Oscar was for the drama movie Kramer vs. Kramer, where she starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in a tale about the break-up of a marriage.
Streep won her second Oscar for the drama movie Sophie's Choice, about a woman who lived through the horrors of World War II. Just like with many other actors, Streep also received an Oscar — her third — for playing a real-life figure. In her case, it was the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Streep once again showed her talent when she mastered an authentic British accent for the role, despite having been born in New Jersey.
2 Ingrid Bergman
The largest number of Academy Awards usually goes to actors from English-speaking countries. Ingrid Bergman broke this mold, since she was born in Sweden and only later came to the United States. She's best known for her romantic war drama Casablanca (1942), but won her three Oscars for different roles (she wasn't even nominated for Casablanca). Her first Academy Award was for the psychological thriller Gaslight (1944), about a woman living in a house where strange things seem to be happening.
The film that won Bergman her second Oscar, Anastasia (1957), is inspired by real events and the theory that the Russian princess Anastasia survived the death of the rest of her family. Her third Oscar was for the adaptation of the Agatha Christie crime novelMurder on the Orient Express, in which the detective Poirot is trying to solve a mysterious murder that happened on a train. Ingrid Bergman was nominated for seven Oscars in total over the span of her career.
1 Katharine Hepburn
As one of the greatest legends of the silver screen, it's no surprise that Katharine Hepburn holds the record as the actress who has won the most Academy Awards. Hepburn received four Academy Awards in total for her roles over a career spanning almost 50 years. She won her first Oscar in 1934 for the romantic drama Morning Glory, about a woman who wants to become an actress. Her second Oscar was for the iconic drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), in which she plays a mother who discovers that her daughter wants to marry an African-American doctor.
Only a year later, Hepburn won another Oscar for the historical drama The Lion in the Winter where she plays a real-life historical figure, the English queen Eleanor. Her final Academy Award came in 1982 for the drama On Golden Pond about marital issues of an older couple. Regardless of which movie viewers choose to watch, Hepburn always gave strong performances, as her 12 Oscar nominations demonstrate.