In honor of Sunday’s 90th Academy Awards, The Hollywood Reporter is reliving the past with every best actress winner throughout the show’s history, beginning with Janet Gaynor.
Back in 1929, when actors could be nominated for multiple projects, she was recognized for her performances in 7th Heaven, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel. She was only 22 years old and remains one of the youngest best actress winners in history.
While the Academy decided to have actors be nominated for only one performance instead of multiple, there have only been two stars who have taken home the best actress award in back-to-back years: Luise Rainer in 1937 for The Great Ziegfeld and in 1938 for The Good Earth; while Katharine Hepburn won for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 1968 and again in 1969 for The Lion in Winter. Hepburn remains the actress with the most Oscar wins with four.
In all of the years of the Academy Awards, there has only been one pair of siblings to both receive the coveted best actress award, and that’s Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. Havilland won two best actress Oscars, in 1946 for To His Each Own and in 1949 for The Heiress. Her younger sister, Fontaine, won in 1941 for Suspicion.
Find out which actress will walk home with the best actress award when the 90th Academy Awards air on Sunday.
