Which woman has won the most Oscars?
The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, have been running for a long time. Launched in 1929, the event was a small affair at first. But now, 95 years in the making, an Oscar is one of the most prestigious accolades a person in the film industry can receive.
Celebrating artistic and technical excellence, the awards stretch beyond best actors or movies. Diving deep into the film industry, they celebrate the people who make the magic happen on every level. There are categories celebrating sound mixing, film editing, title writing, effect engineering and more.
While being best known as a glitzy occasion for the Hollywood elite to get together, at its core, the Oscars is about the joy of filmmaking as a whole. Beyond the Scorseses, the Tarantinos and the Kubricks of the world, unknown names make the movie world go round.
In fact, the person who has won the most Oscars isn’t an actor or a director at all. With a total of 35 nominations, the costume designer Edith Head has the most nominations out of anyone. Between 1949 and 1977, Head won the Academy Award for ‘Best Costume Designer’ eight times, making her the woman with the most Oscars. Walt Disney holds the record for the most Oscars won by a single person, with 22 awards.
While Edith Head’s name might not be known, her work will be. As a costume designer, she worked on The Jungle Princess, shooting to acclaim for designing Dorothy Lamour’s sarong. She also designed costumes for numerous Hollywood starlets like Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and Ginger Rogers.
Perhaps her most notable work came with her long-running collaborations with Audrey Hepburn. As the head costume designer on Sabrina, Roman Holiday and Funny Face, Head helped craft some of Hepburn’s most famous on-screen looks. While the film shockingly wasn’t nominated for best costume design, Head is the woman behind the wardrobe of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, easily one of the most iconic cinematic fashion moments of all time.
She won Oscars for both Roman Holiday and Sabrina in the consecutive years of 1953 and 1954. She picked up other wins for films like All About Eve, A Place In The Sun, The Sting and Facts of Life.
But beyond the lengthy list of her Oscar nominations and wins, Head was an absolutely prolific creative. As the woman behind some of the most iconic costumes in the golden age of Hollywood cinema, her talented eye made her the leading designer of the era. On contract at Paramount and then at Universal Studios, she played a vital role in the 1950s studio heyday.
Every movie fan will have encountered her work at some point. She dressed Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd, Kim Novak in Vertigo, Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii, Fred Astaire in Holiday Inn, Jane Fonda in Barefoot In The Park – and the list goes on. Without Head, so many of the most famous fashion moments in film history wouldn’t have happened.
Earning herself an Oscar nomination almost every year of her career, her work was also recognised with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sadly passing away in 1981, Head’s work remains deeply influential and forever celebrated in movie history through her long legacy.
