The 10 people who have won the most Oscars
Winning one Academy Award is difficult enough, but doing it more than once is a trickier prospect, with the acting categories being the hardest.
Katharine Hepburn remains the only on-camera performer to have won four, while there are only six names to have ever taken home three Oscars for their acting work. Beyond that, multi-time winners may become more regular in terms of volume, but that nonetheless puts the recipients in the most rarefied of air.
Billy Wilder is the sole writer and director who can be called a six-time Oscar winner, after triumphing for both ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Screenplay’ twice over for The Lost Weekend and The Apartment, the latter of which also netted him a ‘Best Picture’ statue, with his final acknowledgement coming in 1987 when he was bestowed with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
20-time nominee Gary Rydstrom has seven victories to his name, winning ‘Best Sound’ and ‘Best Sound Mixing’ for Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan, in addition to ‘Best Sound’ for Titanic. Influential makeup artist Rick Baker has also notched a septet, which all came in the ‘Best Makeup’ category, beginning with 1982’s An American Werewolf in London and ending with 2011’s The Wolfman.
Edith Head’s eight victories for ‘Best Costume Design’ make her the most-awarded woman in the history of the Oscars, with EGOT Alan Menken currently holding a record for being the most prolific winner of competitive Oscars that’s still alive, boasting four gongs apiece for ‘Best Original Score’ and ‘Best Original Song’.
Tom and Jerry is responsible for seven of Fred Quimby’s eight Oscars – all of which were for ‘Best Animated Short Subject’ – with 1940’s The Milky Way his first and only accolade that didn’t feature the iconic cartoon enemies, underlining that Walt Disney wasn’t the only icon of animation to regularly find themselves on the winning end.
Visual effects trailblazer Dennis Muren has nine Oscars tucked away in his trophy cabinet, winning a ‘Technical Achievement Award’ in 1982 before notching two ‘Special Achievement Award’ wins for Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, in addition to a further six ‘Best Visual Effects’ trophies. The only other nine-time champion is legendary composer Alfred Newman, who won every single one of them for ‘Best Original Score’ in a career that racked up 45 nominations in total.
It’s entirely fitting that the person who designed the statue itself would be near the top of the all-time recipient’s list, with Cedric Gibbons being offered a constant reminder of his most indelible contribution to awards season by lifting 11 Oscars for ‘Best Production Design’, making him one of just two people to have reached double figures.
As if Disney’s monumental impact on modern entertainment wasn’t vast enough, he didn’t just win more Oscars than anybody else, the passage of time has continued to see him reign supreme with twice as many as his nearest competitor, after the founder of the pop culture staple and all-conquering cultural behemoth bowed out as a 22-time Oscar winner.
People with the most Oscar wins:
- Billy Wilder – 6
- Gary Rydstrom – 7
- Rick Baker – 7
- Fred Quimby – 8
- Edith Head – 8
- Alan Menken – 8
- Dennis Muren – 9
- Alfred Newman – 9
- Cedric Gibbons – 11
- Walt Disney – 22
