Where do Oscar-winning actors go to university?

The winners of the 2024 Oscars have been revealed and as the red (champagne) carpet is being stored away for another year, Times Higher Education looked at the winners of the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards over the past 30 years to see where they went to university (perhaps to refine their Oscar winning talents?)

Looking back at the higher education paths of these Oscar winners reveals that University of California system, Yale University and the University of Cambridge produced the highest number of Oscar winners.

In 2023, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress and the second woman of colour to win the Best Actress award. She didn't go to university, but began her career as a dancer which helped her to perform her own stunts in her first few roles. 

The relatively high number of University of California alumni winning Oscars, which include Nicholas Cage (for Leaving Las Vegas in 1996) and Helen Hunt (for As Good As It Gets in 1998) could suggest that studying in close proximity to Hollywood increases your chances of an Oscar win. Many Oscar winners also studied at community colleges across California, with one of the Best Actor winners (Sean Penn) and one Best Actress (Hilary Swank) attending Santa Monica Community College.

The University of Cambridge is the alma mater of Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything, 2015), Emma Thompson (Howard’s End, 1993) and Olivia Colman (The Favourite, 2019). Interestingly, none of them chose to study drama opting instead for history of art, English literature and primary teaching respectively. Colman left Cambridge after one term and went on to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. 

Yale University produced two winners with both Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, 2012) and Frances McDormand (Fargo, 1997, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, 2018, Nomadland, 2021) receiving a master of fine arts from the university. 

However, as would be expected the majority of these winners chose to study drama or theatre degrees. Of those who didn’t, English literature was a popular choice as were art, photography or music. Natalie Portman (Black Swan, 2011) was one of the few to buck the arts trend and chose a psychology degree. 

While many Oscar winners felt that university was the right course to theatrical success, eight actors and four actresses across the last 30 years chose to forgo university or theatre school altogether. Instead, many stepped into the spotlight early on or took up less glamorous jobs until they got their big break.

Best Actress winners were more likely to go to university than their male counterparts, but a greater number of them dropped out midway through their courses. These included Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, 2014), Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, 2001) and Helen Hunt (As Good as it Gets, 1998), who dropped out of the University of Melbourne, Georgia State University and the University of California, Los Angeles respectively. 

Best universities for performing arts degrees
What can you do with a performing arts degree?

The Best Actress winners were also more likely to have attended a university featured in the Times Higher Education’s World University Ranking’s top 20, with Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University and the University of Cambridge all producing winners in this category. In comparison, only Eddie Redmayne and Casey Affleck attended universities ranked in the THE top 20 (University of Cambridge and Columbia University respectively).

It seems that the route to stardom is multi-forked, and that little gold statue can be attained in many ways. Ivy League institutions, community colleges and drama schools (and choosing not to attend university at all) have all produced talented actors and actresses. It will be interesting to see which route the 2024 winners will have taken to win the top awards at next years' 96th Academy Awards. 

The winners and their colleges

Best Actors

Best Actresses  

Methodology: Actors did not have to graduate for their college to be included. For the purposes of the analysis, the University of California system has been treated as a single institution. Individual university information is available in the two tables above