Best Actress Oscar Winners

Congratulations to Lily Gladstone for Oscar win as Best Actress
Congratulations to Lily Gladstone for Oscar win as Best Actress

Want to know the best Best Actress Oscar Winners?  How about the worst Best Actress Oscar Winners?  Curious about Best Actress Oscar Winners box office grosses or which Best Actress Oscar Winners picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Best Actress Oscar Winners got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place …. because we have all of that information.

Since 1927, there have been 90 Best Actress Oscar Winners. This page will rank all 90 Best Actress Oscar Winning movies from Best to Worst in five different sortable columns of information.  If you use the sort and search buttons the massive table becomes very interactive.

Best Actress Oscar Winners Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In The Table Below

The really cool thing about ther table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Best Actress Oscar Winners by the winners
  • Sort Best Actress Oscar Winners by actual domestic box office grosses
  • Sort Best Actress Oscar Winners by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Best Actress Oscar® Winning Movies by critic reviews and audiences voting.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Best Actress Oscar Winning Movie received.
  • Sort Best Actress Oscar Winning Movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Movie Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.  The ceiling to earn points for box office is $200 million…once a movie passes that mark it stops earning points in that category.
 
Audrey Hepburn in 1953's Roman Holiday
Audrey Hepburn in 1953’s Roman Holiday

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

Conspiracy Theory:  The time…the 59th Academy Awards®.  As is the custom the previous year’s Best Actor winner was the presenter of the Best Actress Award.  In this case that meant William Hurt had the duty to announce the category.  At the time Hurt was in a relationship Marlee Matlin.  Hurt and Matlin had starred in Children Of A Lesser God together and had become an off screen couple.  What if Sigourney Weaver’s name was really the winner and Hurt called the love of his life…Marlee Matlin? Only three people in the entire world would know the truth…..Hurt and the two accountants responsible for keeping the results secret.  Would the two accountants really rush on to the stage during one of the most heart felt Oscar® acceptance speeches and take the Oscar® away from the hearing impaired Matlin?

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89 thoughts on “Best Actress Oscar Winners”

  1. Cogerson, your Pages are becoming ‘Movie Central’ everything you could possibly want to know about a very interesesting industry. This movie page was packed with information.

    Left the page feeling a little sad for Meryl Streep.

    Reply

    1. Hey mckbirdbks….thanks for the great compliment. As for Streep, I think she is doing just fine….after all she does hold the record for most nominations….and she does have two Oscars that can help hold up some books on a book shelf….lol. His first win was as Best Supporting Actress.

      Reply

  3. Hi Bruce; After getting over my anger that Myrna Loy never won an Oscar (Arrgh!!!) I enjoyed looking over the list of great actresses. Katherine Hepburn remains the queen, even though none of her films scored on top of the list. (I’m still amazed that Streisand tied with her for “Funny girl”. Hepburn was incredible in “the Lion in winter”.)

    I hadn’t realized that it has been so long since streep won. She is nominated so often, I forgot that she hasn’t won in a long time. that has to be frustrting for such a great actress, to keep getting nominated and losing.

    Vivian Leigh is on top of the list, I see. Actually, most people today don’t remember her as anything but Scarlet ‘O’Hara. The average person probably can’t name another Vivian Leigh film.

    I’m not in the mood right now to count how many of these films I’ve seen but I know I’ve seen most of them.

    Another fun and interesting page,

    Rob

    Reply

    1. Hey Rob…thanks for the visit. I agree it is a shame that Myrna Loy is not on this list. 30 years without an Oscar win for Streep….she picked up 2 wins in 4 years….and nothing since. I think the Oscar voters are thinking they need to give her another award…and this could be the year.

      As for Vivien Leigh….I think most could get Streetcar as well….but other than those two movies…I agree they pretty much know very little about her career….which I most admit…I do not think I could name 5 of her movies myself.

      Thanks for the comment and the compliment…..I want to get the directors done as well….but I think my next page will concentrate on predictions for the nominations….I did a hub last year(I can not believe it has been a year)…and got 89% of my guesses correct…it should be interesting.

      Reply

  4. Okay, this comment will say what the films are that I have seen, like etc.

    Do not ask me for the order I prefer for a top ten of mine.. too hard. However, I would say that the *best* performance is indeed Leigh in Gone With the Wind, although my *favourite* top ten performance is Hepburn in Roman Holiday followed closely by Andrews in Mary Poppins. I watch them more frequently.

    Top Ten Box Office: I have seen 6:

    in order listed:

    Gone With The Wind

    Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

    Funny Girl

    On Golden Pond

    Mrs. Miniver

    Terms of endearment

    By the way – I am unsure how to list Gayner as I saw Sunrise but not Seventh Heaven .5? no. I’ll choose one or the other, so do count that in my overall tally.

    Back to Top tens

    Top Ten Critics: I have seen 7 of them, #4-10:

    It Happened One Night

    Gone With the wind

    Roman Holiday

    Sunrise (see note above)

    Mary Poppins

    A Streetcar named Desire

    The Heiress

    And the top movie Score ten in order: I have seen 6:

    Gone with the wind

    Mrs. Miniver

    mary Poppins

    Cabaret

    Terms of Endearment

    Driving Miss daisy

    Because the top twenty do represent my highest percentage I will state which ones I have seen from #11-20 (won’t do that for all 48 I’ve seen)

    From 11-20, my favourite movie is Funny Girl. The best of the movie performances I have seen, in my opinion, is again, Vivian Leigh – this time in A streetcar named Desire.

    Here are the films I have seen from #11-20:

    Funny Girl

    On Golden Pond

    as Good As It Gets

    Johnny Belinda

    The Great Zigfield

    Guess who’s Coming to Dinner

    A Streetcar Named Desire

    The Country Girl.

    The earliest film I’ve seen, is as stated, Sunrise.

    The most recent film I’ve seen is Walk the line.

    Top ten critics: In the order you list them:

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora….Janet Gaynor won her Oscar for three performances…I could only find information for two of the three movies…..so I took the average for her total. Glad to see you are happy with the top choice….one of the best ways to score high in my system is to win an Oscar for acting in a movie that wins the Best Picture Oscar. I think the first four movies fall into that category.

      Roman Holiday ranked so low because it was not much of a box office winner way back in 1953/1954…but it is ranked 6th according to critics and audiences.

      Sounds like I should do a hub on Vivien Leigh…..I like GWTW much more than Streetcar….I find Streetcar very hard to finish…not sure if it is Brando’s acting or just the story.

      I think at some point you are going to have to watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest….most of the movie is pretty uplifting with only the last 15 minutes being sad…and Louise Fletcher is awesome as the evil, just doing my job nurse. Thanks as always for contributing to my page.

      Reply

  5. Hi Cogerson, I’ve seen 64 of these movies (which I was quite shocked at!). My faves would be Frances McDormant in ‘Fargo’, Elizabeth Taylor in ‘Butterfield 8’, Katharine Hepburn in ‘The Lion In Winter’, Vivien Leigh in GWTW but she’s also great in Streetcar Named Desire. I hope Viola Davis gets the nod this year, she is excellent in The Help. Meryl’s imaginary friend is Mrs Thatcher’s dead husband Denis’ ghost. Meryl looks and sounds amazing as Mrs Thatcher. Great movie page.

    Reply

    1. Wow Jools99..64 is pretty impressive. That would be good enough for second place in the little tally count Flora, Steve and myself do…..Cogerson 78, Jools99 64, Flora 48, Steve 43. I guess the thing that I do not understand is why the producers of The Iron Lady would talk about her illness when they is so much more they could cover. When I heard about this movie I was not thinking it would be a movie about dementia.

      I think right now Viola Davis is the leading contender, with Streep being the second choice…too bad so many people think the performance is great but the movie is bad. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

      1. Bruce, I don’t think The Iron Lady is just about Lady Thatcher’s dementia, it’s just the framing story. There are flashbacks to her in Parliament, making decisions, arguing, going to war against Argentina, watching Out of Africa etc etc 😉

        Reply

      2. Just realised I’d forgotten about Greer Garson being in my list – Mrs Miniver is one of my favourite movies. I am going to see La Vie En Rose when I get a chance, looks interesting.

        Reply

        1. Hey Steve..good to know that the Iron Lady is more than her dealing with her illness….every review I read on the movie seems to concentrate on the illness more than the things she accomplished. It opens here in the states tomorrow…it will be interesting to see if Streep’s new found box office power will turn this movie into a box office hit. My magic crystal ball says no.

          Reply

        2. Hey Jools…Mrs. Miniver is a pretty good movie….and it only adds to your impressive tally. La Vie En Rose is not exactly a fun movie to watch. But Marion Cotillard is simply awesome in the role. Thanks for the revisit.

          Reply

        3. I read a biography of Vivien Leigh about 20 years ago and she was a fascinating woman but very tormented. She suffered from crippling manic depression and suffered with mental illness for most of her adult life, even having electric shock therapy in the early sixties. She died fairly young as a result of complications arising from her having tuberculosis as a child aged 53. She didn’t make too many movies but one of ’em was an absolute corker!

          Reply

          1. Hey Jools99….I have read the same information about Leigh….from an outsiders view….it had to be heartbreaking for Olivier to watch her fall apart like that….but he did try and stay by her side until the sad end. Usually when I do a hub, I try and stay away from the negative side…I think that will be very difficult when I do a Vivien Leigh page

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