While there are some obvious female winners in the Best Actress category, there are many more who you may have never heard of. These include Halle Berry, Dame Helen Mirren, and Marion Cotillard. Let’s take a closer look at each of these award-winning women.
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman is one of the most celebrated actresses of all time. Bergman has been nominated for an Academy Award seven times and won twice, once for Best Actress and once for Best Supporting Actress. She has also been nominated for four Golden Globes and two Emmys. She is the fourth highest-ranked woman in AFI’s list of the greatest actresses of all time.
Ingrid Bergman and Mary Pickford have each won the Best Actress Oscar, and they’re both a part of Academy history. They each won for a role that brought them fame, and their performances earned them rave reviews. But who has won the Best Actress award the most times?
Halle Berry
Halle Berry has made a name for herself as a groundbreaking actress. In 2002, she became the first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar. In her acceptance speech, she paid homage to Dorothy Dandridge, the first woman of color to be nominated for an Oscar. Dandridge’s real-life story is the subject of a Halle Berry biopic.
Halle Berry’s Oscar speech was one of the most memorable in Oscar history. Unlike many other Best Actress nominees, Halle Berry was not considered a favorite to win the award in 2002. Many people thought Sissy Spacek was the better actress, but Berry’s speech is still one of the best.
Dame Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren is one of the most acclaimed actresses in Hollywood. She has won numerous awards for her work, including a Best Actress Oscar in 2007 for her role in The Queen. Mirren is also known for her role in the Tony Award-winning play, The Audience. She has won the Triple Crown of Acting in the United States and United Kingdom, which consists of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award.
Mirren has been nominated for numerous awards, including Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Her role in “Hitchcock” earned her a Golden Globe and SAG awards. Her latest role is as a Mossad agent in “The Debt.” Mirren started her acting career in the National Youth Theatre, playing Cleopatra. She later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company where she played the lead role in “Macbeth.”
Marion Cotillard
Despite being a French national, Marion Cotillard is a prolific international actress. Born in Paris, France on September 30, 1975, she is now one of France’s most respected and admired actors. In addition to acting, she is also a singer and has received critical acclaim for her roles. In addition to her Oscar nomination, Cotillard has also won the Cesar Award for Best Supporting Actress twice.
After a successful acting career in France, Cotillard returned to Hollywood to star in several movies, including the Steven Soderbergh thriller Contagion, with Jude Law and Kate Winslet. She has also appeared in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Jacques Audiard’s De rouille et d’os, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman adventure, The Dark Knight Rises.
Jessica Chastain
Jessica Chastain, the televangelist in the Oscar-winning film Zero Dark Thirty, was one of the few surprise winners of the Best Actress award. Nominated for two previous films, Chastain’s Best Actress win was her first since the 2012 Academy Awards for The Help.
The 94th Academy Awards announced its nominations and awards Sunday. The Best Actress category was won by Jessica Chastain, who beat out Olivia Colman, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Kristen Stewart for her performance in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” Chastain also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress.
