Academy Award for Best Actress

Academy Award for Best Actress
The 2025 recipient: Mikey Madison
Awarded for	Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Country	United States
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
First award	May 16, 1929; 95 years ago (1929-05-16) (for films released during the 1927/1928 film season)
Most recent winner	Mikey Madison, Anora (2024)
Most awards	Katharine Hepburn (4)
Most nominations	Meryl Streep (17)
Website	oscars.org

The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 1st Academy Awards to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actor winner. However, in recent years, it has shifted towards being presented by previous years' Best Actress winners instead.

The Best Actress award has been presented 97 times, to 80 different actresses. The first winner was Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), and the most recent winner is Mikey Madison for her role in Anora (2024). The record for most wins is four, held by Katharine Hepburn; Frances McDormand has won three times, and thirteen other actresses have won the award twice. Meryl Streep has received the most nominations in the category—seventeen—and has won twice. At the 41st Academy Awards in 1969, Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn received the same number of votes and so shared the award, the only time this has occurred.