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The Academy Awards have long vaunted acting titans, and a rare few male actors have commandeered the Best Actor statuette more than once, with Daniel Day-Lewis scaling the peak thrice. From living legends like Tom Hanks to recent winners such as Adrien Brody, 10 men are trailing Day-Lewis’ record. Here is every name with two or more wins in this hallowed category.
1. Daniel Day-Lewis
Sir Daniel Day-Lewis stands alone with three Best Actor Oscars, a feat no other man has matched. His wins were facilitated thanks to dramatic transformations for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln—roles that exhibit him as an unforgettable chameleon. The Irish actor has retired since 2017’s Phantom Thread, but his five nominations out of fewer than a couple dozen movies certainly make us wonder whether Day-Lewis could come back for that gold once again to surmount Katharine Hepburn’s four Best Actress wins.
2. Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper, an absolute icon of Hollywood’s golden era who delivered some of the most memorable performances in the Western genre and collaborations with Frank Capra, won for Sergeant York, a war hero’s duty, and High Noon, a sheriff’s stand. His other notable lead actor nominations include Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Pride of the Yankees, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, all of which emphasize his image as the bygone era’s everyman.
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3. Jack Nicholson
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Jack Nicholson’s career can conveniently be summed up via the title of his cult horror film, The Shining. The Chinatown star carries two Best Actor wins among his three total acting Oscars despite having retired 15 years ago. Nicholson’s Oscar-winning roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good as It Gets remain iconic. Born in 1937, his age and retreat dim his shot at Day-Lewis’ record, but his liaisons with the Academy endure as cataclysmic.
4. Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins, 87, witnessed a late surge in his career, taking home the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Silence of the Lambs with 16 minutes of screentime as Hannibal Lecter, though every frame with him is garish. Nearly three decades after that rare victory in the horror realm, Hopkins edged out the late Chadwick Boseman, winning for The Father, becoming the oldest winner at 83. Given that Hopkins has yet to retire, there lies a strong set of possibilities that he walks the podium a third time.
5. Spencer Tracy
Before Tom Hanks, Spencer Tracy remained the only actor to triumph consecutively at the Academy Awards for Best Actor, thanks to his roles in Captains Courageous and Boys Town in 1937-38. He is also tied with Laurence Olivier for the most nominations in his category at nine, a record yet to be broken 57 years after Tracy’s passing.
6. Adrien Brody
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The Darjeeling Limited star now has as many leading wins as Darjeeling-born legendary actress Vivien Leigh of A Streetcar Named Desire and Gone with the Wind fame. Adrien Brody, at 29, became the youngest Best Actor winner for The Pianist, a record he still holds, then propelled himself to two with The Brutalist a couple of decades later. The latter also made him the only actor to turn his first and second nominations into victories. Both of Brody’s films were epic Holocaust dramas rooted in plumb abject depths that deeply resonated with audiences. At 51, he’s currently the youngest male actor to hold two lead acting Oscars, eyeing a third.
7. Sean Penn
Sean Penn dominated the 2000s when he garnered two Best Actor wins for Mystic River, exhibiting a grieving father’s vengeful grief, and then again for Milk, embodying Harvey Milk’s fervent activism. His victories were also long overdue and came after he had been snubbed thrice between 1995 and 2002 for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, and I Am Sam.
8. Tom Hanks
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In the mid-90s, Tom Hanks won back-to-back Best Actor trophies for portraying a gay lawyer’s battle against AIDS in Philadelphia and for a luminous everyman in Forrest Gump. He has come close plenty, registering five additional nominations and then some in supporting roles. His Golden Globe-winning roles in Big and Cast Away, and his turn as a WWII soldier in Saving Private Ryan, have rendered him a cultural icon. And while still in the game, he’s a living contender to surmount Day-Lewis, his liaisons with audiences unbroken.
9. Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman is another actor born in 1937 who is not slowing down at 87 years of age. While his most memorable film remains The Graduate, he accrued wins for Kramer vs. Kramer, playing a father involved in a custody battle, and Rain Man, an autistic savant’s odyssey where he passed the torch to on-screen brother Tom Cruise. Hoffman also has a myriad of other accolades and Oscar nominations, including an acting masterclass in Midnight Cowboy.
10. Marlon Brando
One of the greatest of all time, Marlon Brando is defined by his intensification, among other eccentric qualities. He redefined the art of acting throughout his filmography, securing the Academy Award for Best Actor twice for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, though he famously snubbed his second Oscar. Brando’s five additional nominations in this category include Viva Zapata!, Sayonara, A Streetcar Named Desire, Last Tango in Paris, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar, in which he played the Roman hero Mark Antony.
11. Fredric March
Fredric March collected wins for Best Actor thanks to his turn as the signature character of dissociative identity disorder, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the 1931 film of the same name, and fifteen years later, as a WWII veteran coming home in The Best Years of Our Lives. When the horror genre faces monumental ordeals in swaying Academy voters, March was the first to achieve this, a task he completed at merely the fifth ceremony. He also has three additional nominations for The Royal Family on Broadway, A Star Is Born, and Death of a Salesman.
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