The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 1st Academy Awards to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actor winner. However, in recent years, it has shifted towards being presented by previous years’ Best Actress winners instead. The Best Actress award has been presented 97 times, to 79 actresses. The first winner was Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The most recent winner is Emma Stone for her role in Poor Things (2023); she had previously won the award for her role in La La Land (2016). The record for most wins is four, held by Katharine Hepburn. Frances McDormand has won thrice, while thirteen other actresses have won the award twice. Meryl Streep has received the most nominations in this category—seventeen—and has won twice. Deborah Kerr holds the record in this category for most nominations (six) without a win—albeit in 1993, she was an Honorary Oscar recipient. At the 41st Academy Awards, Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn received the same number of votes and thus tied for Best Actress (the only time this has occurred). Italian actress Sophia Loren became the first actor, in any category, to win for a foreign language performance in Two Women (1960).

Nominations process

Nominees are currently determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. In the first three years of the awards, actors and actresses were nominated as the best individuals in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. Despite this, at the 3rd Academy Awards, held in 1930, only one film was cited in each winner's award regardless of how many they were eligible to be considered for during that span. The current system, in which an actress is nominated for a specific performance in a single film, was introduced for the 4th Academy Awards. Starting with the 9th Academy Awards, held in 1937, the category was limited to a maximum five nominations per year.

Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months, from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

The following individuals received two or more Best Actress awards: The following individuals received three or more Best Actress nominations:

Age superlatives

Films with multiple Leading Actress nominations

Winners are in bold.

Multiple character nominations

The following were nominated for their portrayals of the same fictional or non-fictional character in separate films (including variations of the original).