The 25 greatest Best Actress winners in Oscar history (2024)

The best Oscar-winning actresses

The 25 greatest Best Actress winners in Oscar history (1)

Every year since 1929, the Academy has nominated several talented women for Best Actress and then crowned their favorite with an Oscar. To be nominated is a career achievement. To win the top prize is to become a Hollywood legend. So woe to the fool who wants to sift through those wonderful Oscar-winning roles and then presume to separate the staggering and stupendous from the merely excellent.

We are those fools. The writers and editors of Entertainment Weekly selected and ranked the 25 greatest Best Actress winners of all time. If you're quick at math, then you already know that over 75 Best Actress winners didn't make the list. Like we said, fools.

25. Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles

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Cabaret (1972), directed by Bob Fosse

Liza Minnelli brings hyperbolic joie de vivre and outrageous eye makeup to her career-defining turn as "strange and extraordinary" American chanteuse Sally Bowles, the showstopping performer at Berlin's taboo-shattering Kit Kat Klub. Minnelli is never less than dazzling, belting out show tunes in Bob Fosse's Weimar-set screen musical, but she's just as mesmerizing in the scenes outside the club in which she must navigate unexpected complications arising from a romantic triangle and the ascendancy of the Third Reich. In the harsher light of day, it's easier to see the way her relentless exuberance and her wildly theatrical flamboyance mask a quaking vulnerability. Minnelli lends her powerful voice to help Sally sing her way through the pain. —Gina McIntyre

The evolution of Liza Minnelli

24. Anna Magnani as Serafina Delle Rose

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The Rose Tattoo (1955), directed by Daniel Mann

According to legend, Tennessee Williams wrote this role specifically for Italian icon Anna Magnani as her first major role in an English-language film. Whether or not that's true is now probably beside the point. It feels true. As Serafina Della Rose, a seamstress and mother who becomes unmoored when her husband is killed and rumors circulate that he had been unfaithful, Magnani delivers one of the most dynamic performances of her era. On the page, Serafina is an archetypical Williams heroine—a woman who feels the world too deeply and is therefore brutalized by its harsh truths and petty cruelties (e.g. Maggie the Cat, Blanche DuBois, Amanda Wingfield). But Magnani elevates Serafina into a lightning storm of rage, sorrow, and vengeance. As she seeks out her husband's alleged mistress, confronts her teenage daughter's resentment, and grapples with a not-very-bright new suitor (Burt Lancaster), Magnani unleashes a torrent of emotional fire and brimstone that, in lesser hands, would border on camp. In hers, it is a tour de force. —Sean Smith

15 classic Tennessee Williams adaptations

23. Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper

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The Heiress (1949), directed by William Wyler

Three years after winning Best Actress for the To Each His Own (and a decade from her first nomination, for Gone With the Wind) Olivia de Havilland discovered her own greatest performance when she saw the Broadway play The Heiress, based on Henry James' novella, Washington Square. By intermission, she knew that she needed to play the lead role of Catherine Sloper, a lumpy dull charisma-void spinster. Though the role required sacrificing vanity, when Catherine's father (Ralph Richardson) destroys her chances to marry a gold-digger (Montgomery Clift), the double betrayal transforms the shy woman into an iron maiden. And de Havilland's implosive final scene, in which she coldly speaks of "the same lies, the same little phrases" she's heard all her life, could also be viewed as a feminist call to arms, as well as an indictment of the falseness and cruelty of Hollywood. —Joe McGovern

The Last Star: An evening with Olivia de Havilland

22. Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins

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Mary Poppins (1964), directed by Robert Stevenson

Much is made of the iconography of the character of Mary Poppins—one of cinema's most famous hyperbole be darned—but perhaps not enough is owed to how Julie Andrews, on the cusp of 30, simultaneously brought green charisma and decades of wisdom to the magical practical nanny. Andrews' nuanced design of P.L. Travers' creation is an astute, mellifluous, and delightfully intimidating creature of talent and propriety—and as the world would realize, so, too, was Andrews. —Marc Snetiker

We ranked the songs in Mary Poppins for its 50th anniversary

21. Julianne Moore as Alice Howland

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Still Alice (2014), directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland

Words slowly, and then quickly, fail Julianne Moore's Alice Howland, a linguistics professor and mother of three adult children suffering the heartbreaking effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. But Moore doesn't need words to convey the fear as the disease advances, like the terror in her eyes as this whip-smart woman goes for a neighborhood jog and suddenly has no idea where she is. Alice loses her memories and her independence piece by piece, but Moore never crashes into melodrama. It's a devastating performance, as Alice grasps desperately to keep semblances of herself intact as her mind betrays her. —Jessica Derschowitz

Julianne Moore talks with EW about her research for Still Alice

20. Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling

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The Silence of the Lambs (1991), directed by Jonathan Demme

Anthony Hopkins is more celebrated for his more showy performance as cannibal psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, but it's Jodie Foster as the rookie FBI agent who drives the almost unbearably intense thriller. Her riveting jail-cell jousts with Lecter are a master's class in acting that she aces, though her most awe-inspiring work comes in the climax, in which Clarice is trapped in serial killer Buffalo Bill's basem*nt. Eyes wide, panting near panic, Foster perfectly captures the audience's own fear of being alone in the dark with a monster. —Tim Stack

Michelle Pfeiffer passed on Silence of the Lambs because it was too 'evil'

19. Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist

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Gaslight (1944), directed by George Cukor

At the center of one of the best, and most unnerving, psychological thrillers ever made, Ingrid Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a young bride who is slowly, methodically manipulated by her new husband (Charles Boyer) into believing that she is going mad. Bergman, then in her late 20s, landed her first Oscar for this intricate, layered, and deeply controlled performance of a bright young woman unraveling before her own, and our, eyes. Bergman's brilliance lies in her ability to project, in just a few early scenes, Paula's intelligence and stability, so that her growing terror as she loses her ability to trust her own mind mirrors our own. In each scene, Bergman makes such subtle, incremental adjustments to Paula's demeanor that her descent into "madness" feels, by the climax, both inevitable and, to our horror, utterly believable. —Sean Smith

18. Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes

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Misery (1990), directed by Rob Reiner

Dirty birdies don't come much dirtier than Annie, the lonely, handy-with-a-sledgehammer psychopath whom Kathy Bates miraculously imbued with sweet humor and pathos—even as she kidnapped and tortured her favorite author. Memorably dowdy fashion notwithstanding, the juicy role—part Nurse Ratched, part Jack Torrence—launched Bates into the Hollywood ether following years of false starts. Three more Oscar nominations—and safe passage on the Titanic—followed, but it's still the actress' charming delivery of the script's chilling avowals—"I'm your number one fan!"—that has the power to bring a person to his knees. Well, ankles. —Marc Snetiker

Inside James Caan and Kathy Bates' Misery reunion for EW

17. Marion Cotillard as Édith Piaf

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La Vie en Rose (2007), directed by Olivier Dahan

In the decades-spanning biopic about legendary French songstress Édith Piaf, 31-year-old Marion Cotillard transforms into a convincing teenaged busker, world-famous cabaret singer, and aging, arthritic morphine addict. It's a deeply emotional journey, especially when her love dies in a plane crash—it's like you can see her heart shatter right before your eyes. Also emotional, sometimes spirited and other times melancholy, are the songs, which Cotillard lip-synched. No matter—she still tapped into a deep reservoir of passion for the music, like in the final reflective number, "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." It's an indelible portrait of a woman, a fighter from the beginning to the end, who never separated her life from her art. —C. Molly Smith

Marion Cotillard to play Lady Macbeth on screen

16. Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath

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The Piano (1993), directed by Jane Campion

It's the kind of role that could lead to actorly histrionics: Ada is a mute woman who communicates via piano, in the remote wilderness, caught in a triangle between a civilized man (Sam Neill) and a poetical barbarian (Harvey Keitel). But in the role that won her a Best Actress Oscar, Holly Hunter reveals the sound of her character's soul with the barest of physical motions. The actress learned sign language and piano-playing for the role, Method-y affectations that explain the craftsmanlike lived-in quality of the performance. But the genius of Hunter here is how she makes Ada both mysterious and an open book—an unknowable enigma who becomes our eyes (and ears) examining the desperate strangeness of the human heart. —Darren Franich

Lessons to learn in The Piano

15. Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975), directed by Milos Forman

The secret to playing a villain, actors often say, is not to play them as a villain. Everyone believes themselves to be the hero of their own story, and that is most definitely true of Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched, the all-business queen bee of the mental institute who just wants Jack Nicholson's authority-bucking R.P. McMurphy to get with the program. But, right from the start, there is something a little too kindly, a little too soft-spoken about her, hints of the controlling mania simmering beneath the starched white uniform. It comes as no surprise to the audience when she shows her true terrible colors, but the genius of Fletcher's performance is that you know Ratched doesn't believe them to be terrible at all. —Clark Collis

Ryan Murphy and Sarah Paulson team for Nurse Ratched origin series at Netflix

14. Cate Blanchett as Jasmine

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Blue Jasmine (2013), directed by Woody Allen

Woody Allen clipped his Jasmine out of the pages of Tennessee Williams, but Cate Blanchett's commanding performance is more than just a well-crafted homage to the delusional Blanche DuBois. Slumming with her sister in San Francisco after her life with her Madoff-like ex in New York implodes, Jasmine isn't quite willing to let go of the affectations that come with living in high society. Blanchett's depiction of a woman coming undone is an all-timer: she's hilarious, she's loathsome, she's heartbreaking. It's jaw-dropping work, crystallized in the film's final scene: drenched and alone, a broken Jasmine sits on a park bench, talking to the only friend she has left. —Jonathon Dornbush

The Awardist: Cate Blanchett on 'bringing the system down' as a 'contemporary' femme fatale in Nightmare Alley

13. Patricia Neal as Alma Brown

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Hud (1963), directed by Martin Ritt

Part of the reason Patricia Neal's role opposite Paul Newman's cowboy cad is branded on fans' brains—despite only about 20 minutes of screen time—is because she never seems to be acting. Which is, of course, always the goal for any actor. But even Newman is acting. Neal is just bein'. You can't take your eyes off the easygoing but slightly besmudged Alma because Neal is so authentic as to actually diminish her co-stars—an admittedly odd compliment. She tells Hud she's a good poker player, and Neal is too, showing only as much as she needs. Every line is a dart. Every delivery has a potent subtext. There's absolutely nothing another actor can learn from watching Neal in Hud. She's that good. —Jeff Labrecque

Patricia Neal: Five essential film performances

12. Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels

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Klute (1971), directed by Alan Pakula

The title belongs to Donald Sutherland's nearly affectless private detective, John Klute, but the movie is all Jane Fonda's. As Bree Daniels, a high-class call girl and aspiring actress possibly marked for murder, she's tough but vulnerable, streetwise but aching for approval. The whole thing couldn't be more '70s if it were rolled up in a shag carpet and wrapped in macramé—there's endlessly groovy talk of sexual kinks and personality crises, and Bree's mod bra-less wardrobe is justly famous. There's real grit underneath the shag haircut and thigh-high boots, though; see the discotheque scene, where her entire body vibrates with a desperate mix of hope, terror, and determination. Fonda would be nominated five more times and win again, for 1978's Vietnam-vet drama Coming Home, but Klute is the one that cemented her as not just her father's daughter or a youthquake sex kitten, but a mesmerizing star in her own right. —Leah Greenblatt

Jane Fonda's best 20 performances

11. Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway

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Terms of Endearment (1983), directed by James L. Brooks

The sight of a distraught mother at the hospital where her daughter lays dying is expected to induce tears under normal circ*mstances. But Shirley MacLaine takes things to a whole other level when Aurora—who audiences could be forgiven for initially dismissing as a vapid and self-absorbed mother—takes our heartstrings and refuses to let go. Cancer-stricken Emma (Debra Winger), suffering and near the end, is in pain, and MacLaine's anguished losing-it at the useless nurses is as mama-bear primal as anything ever put on film. Within a movie full of Kleenex moments, this is the big one. —Sara Vilkomerson

10. Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews

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It Happened One Night (1934), directed by Frank Capra

The great American screwball heroine. Socialite-on-the-run Ellie is equal parts disreputably decadent and spunky-cool, the perfect love-hate match for Clark Gable's sozzled cynic reporter. Claudette Colbert was a big star in the Hollywood Golden Age, and she had a long career, earning a Tony in the '50s and an Emmy nod in the '80s. But nothing can match her performance in It Happened One Night for sheer funny-sensual energy. The "hitchhiking" scene should seem old-fashioned to our modern debased sensibility—a lady's bare leg, gosh!—but 80 years later, you can still feel how Colbert injects the scene with puckish transgression. —Darren Franich

Remakes with different titles

9. Bette Davis as Julie Marsden

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Jezebel (1938), directed by William Wyler

Bette Davis may have had more iconic roles during her illustrious career, but her turn as a headstrong Southern belle in Jezebel stands out as one of Hollywood's earliest feminist-leaning heroes. In character as a free spirit who scorns social convention, Davis is all haughty tosses of the head and sneering lines. But then comes Julie's ultimate display of impulsive rebellion—in that unforgettable ball scene, when she arrives wearing a vampy dark dress—and Davis shifts gears, moving swiftly from spunky and spirited to shrinking and thoroughly shamed. It's a transformation that unfolds in a matter of moments, showcasing her range from imperious to empathetic. —Nina Terrero

Ryan Murphy talks Feud and women in Hollywood

8. Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson

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Fargo (1996), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

"I'm not sure I agree 100 percent with your police work, there, Lou." No single line embodies both the overflowing kindness and fierce competence of small-town Brainerd's chief of police, Marge Gunderson. She's talking to a colleague who has misread a bloody snowbound crime scene, but she leaves her gloves on. The world is cold enough. In a movie that skewers the concept of "Minnesota nice," Marge is the real deal. She has a razor intellect belied by her jaunty folksy Midwestern accent, dontchaknow, but she doesn't turn that blade on anyone except the wrongdoers who deserve it. We see the worst of human nature in Fargo, as William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard plots his own wife's kidnapping to raise ransom money for a parking lot investment, and as one scumbag willing to do such a rotten deed feeds his deceased partner into a wood-chipper, but Frances McDormand's Marge is the emotional center that carries us through as safely and snugly as that baby who's nestled inside her. —Anthony Breznican

Best Actress winner Frances McDormand is now the Oscars' most decorated living actress

7. Diane Keaton as Annie

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Annie Hall (1977), directed by Woody Allen

Well, la-di-da. When Coney Island's most neurotic Jew meets the shiksa goddess of Chippewa Falls, Wisc., and falls in love, movie fans got one of the most magically mismatched couples of all time. Woody Allen is at his manic, self-flagellating best (the film would also go on to win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay), but it's Diane Keaton—with her loopy mannerisms, jazz-club serenades, and endlessly imitated fashion sense—who gives Annie Hall its sweetly beating heart. —Leah Greenblatt

Diane Keaton to receive AFI Life Achievement Award

6. Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena

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Boys Don't Cry (1999), directed by Kimberly Peirce

Kimberly Peirce's haunting true-life portrait of Brandon Teena was far from Hilary Swank's first role. The actress had appeared in television and had previously been heralded as The Next Karate Kid, but her performance in Boys Don't Cry is one of the boldest breakthroughs ever captured on film. With her complete transformation and inhabiting of a transgender character, Swank went from near obscurity to an acclaimed actress that demanded the industry's attention. Everyone expected to see her up on the Oscars stage again sometime soon, and they were right. —Kevin P. Sullivan

Boys Don't Cry, Purple Rain, She's Gotta Have It added to National Film Registry

5. Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce

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Mildred Pierce (1945), directed by Michael Curtiz

Is Mildred Pierce a film noir? A women's picture? Yes, and yes. But it's also a masoch*stic march through the stations of the cross for Joan Crawford's stoic hero as she suffers through a failed first marriage, a playboy second husband, and a spoiled ingrate daughter from hell. Viewed through our 21st-century lens, Crawford's performance (those shoulder pads!) can seem like it's teetering on the edge of camp. After all, it's hard to watch her and not see the long shadow cast by Mommie Dearest. But for its time, Mildred Pierce's self-made brand of feminism was undeniably revolutionary. Crawford was always an underrated actress, but there's something about playing such an underestimated up-by-her-bootstraps woman in Michael Curtiz's film that liberates her to be better than she ever was before and better than she ever would be again. —Chris Nashawaty

Joan Crawford: Still relevant

4. Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara

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Gone With The Wind (1939), directed by Victor Fleming

The most iconic Southerner in American history was played by a Brit—and one who almost didn't get the part. Producer David Selznick launched a nationwide casting search for the role of Margaret Mitchell's resilient heroine, and Tallulah Bankhead, Lana Turner, and Paulette Goddard all screen-tested. In the end, it went to the relatively unknown Vivien Leigh, who tapped into all aspects of Scarlett O'Hara's complicated personality. Scarlett is all at once petty, brave, selfish, resourceful, devious, and resilient, and Leigh's multi-layered portrayal makes you feel both scorn and sympathy for the legendary Southern belle. —Devan Coggan

Gone With the Wind at 75: Scarlett and Rhett forever

3. Elizabeth Taylor as Martha

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), directed by Mike Nichols

Elizabeth Taylor won her second Academy Award blowing up the ingénue image minted in her Oscar winning-turn in Butterfield 8. She reportedly gained 30 pounds to play the much-older Martha, a volcanically caustic and soused woman who mercilessly humiliates her miserable husband George (Richard Burton) through their cruel emotional games that have a deeper, sadder purpose than mere bitter ball-busting. What she accomplishes under the direction of Nichols (his first film) in this adaptation of Edward Albee's acclaimed play owes much to her turbulent relationship with then-husband Burton. By playing against image, by glamming down and going raw, Taylor helped forge the modern template for so many Oscar-winning performances that followed her. —Jeff Jensen

All the couples nominated for Oscars in the same year

2. Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois

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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), directed by Elia Kazan

Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Desire documents the tragic mental deterioration of Blanche DuBois, a fading Southern belle who moves to New Orleans to join her sister and her brutish brother-in-law. That said tortured belle is played by Vivien Leigh, who also breathed life into Scarlett O'Hara, is one of Hollywood's most poetic twists of fate. Leigh used every moment, every expression, to tell Blanche's story and to illustrate her torment, her delusion, and her desire for affection. And when her brother-in-law, Stanley (Marlon Brando) finally rapes her, her descent into madness was made all the more vivid and believable by Leigh's precise depiction of vulnerability and instability. —Samantha Highfill

1. Meryl Streep as Sophie Zawistowski

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Sophie's Choice (1982), directed by Alan Pakula

In Sophie's Choice, Meryl Streep's performance as a Polish survivor of the Holocaust is so beautifully shaded, so infused with every element of her character's light and darkness, that the mere feat of her mastering two full languages—she learned to speak both Polish and German for the part—almost seems like an afterthought. She's luminous; she's haunted. And then there's "the choice" when she's forced to make an impossible decision. Novelist William Styron wrote that "tormented angels never screeched so loudly above hell's pandemonium" when he described Sophie's reaction to the dilemma, but Streep's interpretation is different: a silent scream, while a Nazi officer makes off with her crying daughter. Streep took what could have been a one-note tragedy and turned it into one of the most transcendent, affecting portrayals ever committed to film. —Leah Greenblatt

Meryl Streep's 22 best performances