Which Hollywood icon has won the most amount of Oscars?
If you ask the most famous actors and directors, many will say that the Academy Awards mean little in the grand scheme of things, but from the outside looking in, they are a pretty good barometer of industry quality. Some of the very best stars collect Oscars like they’re stamps, with the likes of Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and Robert De Niro having multiple awards to their name.
Indeed, only Daniel Day-Lewis has won the Oscar for ‘Best Leading Actor’ three times, first taking home the prize in 1990 for the Jim Sheridan movie My Left Foot, where he played a man with cerebral palsy who paints with just one foot. Some 17 years later, after his collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood, he claimed his next award; then, in 2012, he would gain his third Oscar for his depiction of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s celebrated movie.
As for directors, the two filmmakers who have won Oscars more times than any other are the American masterminds Billy Wilder and John Ford. Nominated a staggering 21 times, Wilder was successful in 1946, 1951 and 1961, winning multiple awards for The Lost Weekend, Sunset Blvd and The Apartment.
Meanwhile, John Ford took home six Oscars for 1936’s The Informer, 1941’s The Grapes of Wrath, 1942’s How Green Was My Valley and 1953’s The Quiet Man.
But there is one Hollywood icon who has won far more Oscars than any other, with the animation master Walt Disney winning a record 22 Academy Awards from 1932 to 1969. In 1932, he won an honorary Oscar for the mere creation of Mickey Mouse, whereas his final award was posthumous, winning for ‘Best Short Cartoon’ for Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.
During his Oscar speech for his win for Lend a Paw in 1942, Disney stated: “I find myself speechless. I knew that there was something here tonight; this is way beyond my expectation. I’ve got a lot of thanking to do. First, for the little short subject award which we’re very proud of. My musicians for their music — it’s going to be hard to get along with them now, I know. Fantasia, in a way I feel like I should have a medal for bravery or something. We all make our mistakes, I know, but it was an honest mistake. But this, this is too much”.
Take a look at Lend a Paw below.
