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Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role winners

  • Reese WitherspoonReese Witherspoon walked into an open casting call in 1991 intending to read for a bit part. She left with the lead in The Man in the Moon, playing Dani Trant, a 14-year-old country girl in Louisiana. Thirty years later, in 2021, Forbes…
  • Meryl StreepDino De Laurentiis insulted Meryl Streep in Italian, not knowing she spoke it. She answered him in Italian too.
  • Julia RobertsJulia Roberts was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on the 28th of October 1967. Her hospital bill was paid by Coretta King, whose children attended an acting school run by Julia's parents. The Roberts family was struggling with money at the time.…
  • Demi MooreIn 2025, Demi Moore received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The honors landed on a career that reaches back to the early 1980s and has…
  • Jennifer LawrenceJennifer Lawrence was 14 years old and on a family vacation in New York City when a talent scout spotted her on the street. The scout arranged for her to audition for talent agents, and that detour set the course of her life. Today she is…
  • Gwyneth PaltrowGwyneth Paltrow won the lead in Emma with a perfect Texas accent. The director said it sold him.
  • Natalie PortmanNatalie Portman turned down a $2,000,000 prize in 2018. She skipped the Genesis Prize ceremony, and it was canceled.
  • Brie LarsonBrie Larson's 2005 album Finally Out of P.E. sold only 3,500 copies. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
  • Sandra BullockSandra Bullock holds a distinction that no other actor can claim. On the night before she collected the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Blind Side, she picked up the Razzie Award for Worst Actress for a different film, All About…
  • Charlize TheronCharlize Theron landed in Los Angeles in 1994 on a one-way ticket her mother had bought, carrying a budget of $300. She lived in a motel and went from paycheck to paycheck. At one point she took bread from a restaurant basket to get by.…
  • Emma StoneEmma Stone, born Emily Jean Stone, once built a PowerPoint presentation for an audience of her parents. Its title was "Project Hollywood," and its purpose was to persuade them to let a teenager from Arizona pursue acting in California. The…
  • Jessie BuckleyJessie Buckley, an Irish actress and singer born on the 28th of December 1989, became the first Irish winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won it in 2026 for playing Agnes Shakespeare in the period drama Hamnet. The win closed…
  • Helen MirrenDame Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff on the 26th of July 1945, at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in the Hammersmith district of London. Neither the first name nor the surname on that record would last. The woman who…
  • Jodie FosterJodie Foster was a teenager when she acted as a French interpreter at a press conference during the Cannes Film Festival. The film was Taxi Driver, which won the Palme d'Or that year, and the journalists in the room came away impressed. By…

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