The only actor to have won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ three times
Arguably, the annual Oscars ceremony doesn’t quite hold the same significance as it once did, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences having lost a number of supporters thanks to its inability to recognise a diverse range of contemporary innovators. Too often focusing solely on Hollywood cinema, the award for ‘Best Picture’ has particularly lost pertinence, with many caring far more about who wins ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Actress’.
Throughout the course of the awards show’s history, a number of iconic performers have picked up awards, with recent recipients of ‘Best Actor’ being Brendan Fraser, Will Smith, Anthony Hopkins and Joaquin Phoenix. Indeed, the names of those who have won the prestigious prize have gone down in history, becoming known as some of the best actors of all time. Still, it’s important to remember that some of the industry’s very best performers have never taken home the iconic statuette.
Stars like Paul Newman, Erroll Flynn, Tony Curtis and Peter Sellers were never lucky enough to take home an Oscar for ‘Best Actor’, leaving a number of other performers to hoard multiple awards themselves. Looking back over the years, the likes of Marlon Brando, Tom Hanks, Gary Cooper, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, and Spencer Tracy have each taken home two Academy Awards for ‘Best Actor’.
One of the most successful actors in the history of the awards show was Jack Nicholson, who earned 12 nominations over his career, winning three times. He won ‘Best Actor’ for both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and As Good as It Gets in 1997, but would take home the award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for 1983’s Terms of Endearment, meaning that only one performer has ever won a trio of ‘Best Actor’ awards.
The British method actor Daniel Day-Lewis is the only performer to have ever achieved the feat of winning three Academy Awards for ‘Best Actor’, rightfully claiming the statuette for three excellent movies. His first award came in 1990 for the Jim Sheridan movie My Left Foot, where he played a man with cerebral palsy who learns how to paint with just his left foot.
His next Oscar would come seventeen years later when he collaborated with the modern master Paul Thomas Anderson for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood. Playing Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector in search of the riches and fame of the American dream, Day-Lewis gave a magnetising performance opposite Paul Dano’s Eli Sunday, a local pastor who is gaining increasing support in the area.
His most recent Academy Award came in 2012, with Daniel Day-Lewis taking home the Oscar for his depiction of the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s film named after the iconic historical figure. Although his Oscar for Lincoln may be his most recent win, he was later nominated for ‘Best Actor’ six years later with the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread.
