The oldest Oscar winner in every Academy Award category
The Academy Awards is all about the celebrations, glamour and community of Hollywood, bringing the year’s best of the best in the film industry together to honour them for their achievements. Figures who have garnered stardom in cinema look to the Oscars as a source of the highest form of validation – the chance to make movie history.
The annual event appears in headlines alongside an actor or director’s name to showcase a record set up, broken or a never-before-seen incident, enticing film buffs with the opportunity to witness incredible feats of movie-making. This factor accentuates the power and status of the Academy, granting cinematic contributors of all areas the chance to solidify their name in history or records.
One significant record a director, writer or actor can obtain through the Oscars is being the youngest or oldest nominee or winner in a distinct category or the history of the Academy.
To exemplify such a valuable and respected accolade is an honour, with the bonus of being the youngest or oldest recipient adding further power to a film career.
The oldest Oscar winners:
Who is the oldest Oscar winner ever?
James Ivory is the oldest Oscar winner in history, achieving the status when he collected his award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ in 2018 for his work on Call Me By Your Name.
There are a few achievements in cinema that actors and directors try to avoid, and we’d bet the accolade of being the “oldest Oscar winner ever” might be one of those moments. However, fragile egos aside, we hope James Ivory, approaching his 95th birthday, is wildly pleased with his glimmering crown.
Ivory is also 79 years older than the youngest winner, Tatum O’Neal, who was ten when she won ‘Best Supporting Actress’. However, the recent announcements for the 95th Academy Awards have brought a change, as John Williams is now the oldest Oscar nominee at age 90, meaning he may take Ivory’s record.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Director’ Oscar
American actor-turned-filmmaker Clint Eastwood is the oldest director to win the Acadamy Award for his movie Million Dollar Baby in 2004, a record he has held for 17 years. This sports drama stars Hilary Swank and Eastwood as an amateur boxer and her trainer, respectively. Eastwood was 74 years old when he received the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ at the 77th Academy Awards. The film also won ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Actress in a Leading Role’ for Swank and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Freeman.
The director was nominated alongside Martin Scorsese for The Aviator, Ray’s Taylor Hackford, Alexander Payne for Sideways and Mike Leigh for Vera Drake.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar
In 2021, actor Sir Anthony Hopkins made history as the oldest winner of ‘Best Actor in a Leading Role’ at 83 years old. The star won for his performance as Anthony, a man suffering from dementia, in Florence Zeller’s psychological drama The Father, which also won ‘Best Original Screenplay’. Hopkins received the gong at the 93rd Academy Awards and made history as the oldest nominee in the category.
The actor could not make it to the ceremony to immerse himself in the atmosphere of his achievement, telling GQ: “The Academy had stipulated that the nominees would have to go to either London or Dublin and, at my age, the risk of Covid and all that, I had no intention of going.”
He added: “So I phoned my agent, and he said, ‘Well, good luck.’ I went to bed, and then at about five o’clock in the morning, my buzzer went off on my phone. My agent said, ‘Tony, you’ve just got the second Oscar!'”
The other nominees included Adarsh Gourav for his performance in The White Tiger, Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round, The Sound of Metal’s Riz Ahmed and lastly, Tahar Rahim for The Mauritanian.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Actress’ Oscar
The oldest recipient of the ‘Best Actress in a Leading Role’ award comes in at only a few years younger than the oldest male, with Jessica Tandy winning for Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy when she was 80. Tandy starred as Daisy Werthman, who navigates relationships, home life and fears over 20 years.
The actor received the award at the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990, holding a 32 years record as the oldest recipient. Driving Miss Daisy also won ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Makeup’ and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, and is the most recent PG-13 feature to win the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’. The other nominees in the ‘Best Leading Actress’ category included Isabelle Adjani in Camille Claudel, Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine, Jessica Lange in Music Box and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar
At 82 years old, Christopher Plummer won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor in a Supporting Role’ at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012, making him the oldest recipient. The actor won for his role as Hal Fields in Beginners, a romantic comedy-drama directed by Mike Mills and following a young man dealing with the passing of his father.
The other nominees hoping to win the award were My Week with Marilyn’s Kenneth Branagh, Jonah Hill for Moneyball, Nick Nolte for Warrior and Max von Sydow for his work in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
In addition, Plummer is also the oldest nominee for the same award, having been nominated when he was 88 for 2017’s All The Money In The World.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar
The 57th Academy Awards saw Peggy Ashcroft receive ‘Best Actress in a Supporting Role’, having wowed the Academy as Mrs Moore in A Passage to India. At 77 years old, Ashcroft is the oldest recipient, having held the record for 37 years. A Passage to India is based on Santha Rama Rau’s play of the same name and explores the interactions of several characters in the fictional city of Chandrapore. In examining racism, imperialism, religion, and the nature of relationships, the movie attracted eleven Oscar nominations and won two, including ‘Best Original Score’.
Ashcroft’s fellow nominees were Glenn Close in The Natural, Places in the Heart’s Lindsay Crouse, Christine Lahti in Swing Shift and Geraldine Page in The Pope of Greenwich Village. The actor’s record also places her as the ninth oldest nominee for the award.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Original Screenplay’ Oscar
Woody Allen takes the spot as the oldest person to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ for his 2011 feature Midnight in Paris. The filmmaker was 76 years old when he received the Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012, holding the record for a decade. Midnight in Paris tells the story of a screenwriter, played by Owen Wilson, who is confronted with the fractures of his relationship with his partner, played by Rachel McAdams.
Allen’s script also received acclaim at the Golden Globes by winning the award for ‘Best Screenplay’. The film also received nominations at the Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Art Direction’. The filmmaker beat Michel Hazanavicius, who was nominated for The Artist, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo for Bridesmaids, Margin Call by J. C. Chandor and A Separation by Asghar Farhadi.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ Oscar
James Ivory became the oldest winner of the Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ in 2018 when he won Call Me By Your Name at 89 at the 90th Academy Awards. The writer adapted André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name with Luca Guadagnino on board as director and Timothée Chalamet and Arnie Hammer as the stars. Call Me By Your Name narrates the relationship between a teenager and his father’s 24-year-old graduate student assistant.
Other nominations for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ included The Disaster Artist’s Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green’s Logan, Molly’s Game by Aaron Sorkin and Mudbound by Virgil Williams and Dee Rees.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Makeup’ Oscar
Regarding the Academy Award for ‘Best Makeup’, the oldest recipient is Gail Ryan, who won the award at 61 in 2001. The makeup artist shared her trophy with Rick Baker, who was also the first to win this award in 1981 and who holds a record seven times from a record eleven nominations, at the 73rd Academy Awards.
The duo won for their work on the Christmas classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey in some fantastic transformative makeup which required CIA training to endure. The film follows the Grinch’s scheme to steal Christmas from right under the Whos’ noses.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Art Direction’ Oscar
Ken Adam is the oldest winner of ‘Best Art Direction’, winning for The Madness of King George in 1994 at 73 during the 67th Academy Awards. This biographical historical comedy-drama film was directed by Nicholas Hytner and starred Nigel Hawthorne as King George III. It narrates the king’s declining mental health and relationship with his son George IV, focusing on the period around the Regency Crisis of 1788–89.
Adam also provided his artistic vision for the classic James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s. The artist also worked with Stanley Kubrick on his 1964 satirical comedy Dr Strangelove.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Cinematography’ Oscar
Conrad Hall was the oldest recipient of ‘Best Cinematography’, as he was 76 when he won for Road to Perdition at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003. Road to Perdition was directed by Sam Mendes and starred Tom Hanks, Paul Newman in his last live-action theatrical film, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig. This win was posthumous, as Hall passed before the ceremony.
The film tells the dramatic crime story of a mob enforcer and his son as they seek vengeance against a mobster who murdered the rest of their family during the Great Depression.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Costume Design’ Oscar
At the 93rd Oscars ceremony, 89-year-old Ann Roth was crowned the oldest winner of the ‘Best Costume Design’ Oscar for her work on Mia Rainey’s Black Bottom, the 2020 film directed by George C. Wolfe. Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts perform tremendously in this adaptation of August Wilson’s play of the same name.
This was Roth’s second win for ‘Best Costume Design’ after winning over 20 years earlier for Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Film Editing’ Oscar
Daniel Mandell was 65 when he received the Oscar for ‘Best Film Editing’ during 1961’s 33rd Academy Awards for the comedy-drama The Apartment, making him the oldest winner of the award.
This film was directed by Billy Wilder and showcased an insurance clerk, played by Jack Lemmon, who invites more senior coworkers to use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct extramarital affairs in hopes of obtaining corporate status.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar
In 2016, composer Ennio Morricone won the Oscar for ‘Best Original Score’ when he was 87, after working with acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino on The Hateful Eight. This mystery thriller features a star-studded cast many Hollywood filmmakers dream of directing, including Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern.
The Italian composer also worked with Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma, comprising over 400 cinematic scores. Morricone is cited as one of the medium’s greatest and most influential composers.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Original Song’ Oscar
For his powerful and thematic work on Danny Boyle’s magnetic film Slumdog Millionnaire, Sampooran Singh Kalra resides as the oldest winner of the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Song’, winning at 74. Boyle’s film stars Dev Patel as a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionnaire? who is soon accused of cheating. Patel’s Jamal then recounts his life story to the police, illustrating how he can answer each question correctly.
The lyricist won at the 81st Academy Awards for the song ‘Jai Ho’, performed at the movie’s end in a tribute to Bollywood cinema through stylised dancing.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Sound Editing’ Oscar
Treg Brown was 66 when he received the Oscar for ‘Best Sound Editing’ in 1966 for The Great Race. Jack Lemmon stars in the technicolour slapstick comedy as a competitive automobile racer who goes up against Tony Curtis. In his conquest, he meets a former suffragette, played by Natalie Woods, who becomes an ally.
Brown won at the 38th Academy Awards for his brilliant sound effects, beating Walter Rossi’s Von Ryan’s Express.
The oldest winner of the ‘Best Sound Mixing’ Oscar
The oldest winner of the Oscar for ‘Best Sound Mixing’ is John Carter, having won the award at 68 in 1976. Carter contributes to one of cinema’s most iconic sounds, the chilling Jaws theme, which is regarded as a testimony to compelling horror filmmaking.
Jaws was directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg and stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brod who takes to the seas to track down a killer shark. Carter worked with the brilliant John Williams, who composed the score, which involves a simple alternating pattern of two notes—identified as “E and F.”
