Walt Disney

Walt Disney won 22 competitive Academy Awards, plus four honorary ones, from 59 nominations. No one else has won as many.

Context

Disney received his first Academy Award in 1932 for Flowers and Trees, the first color cartoon to win. Many of his awards came for animated and live-action short films, in categories such as cartoon and two-reel subjects, and others were for documentary and feature work produced by his studio.

The count of 22 competitive awards is the commonly cited figure for one individual, and it comes with 4 honorary Oscars that are not counted in that total. The most famous honorary award was for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1939, when he was given one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones. In 1954 he won four Oscars in a single evening, a feat noted in Academy records.

Counts for Disney can vary slightly, because some awards went to the studio or to other credited people alongside him, and sources differ on how to treat shared and honorary awards. The record stands out because it covers a career spanning from the early sound era to the 1960s.

For context, Disney's total comes from roughly 59 nominations, so he won more than a third of the times he was nominated. His studio's films and shorts continued to collect awards after his death in 1966, but those are credited to others and are not part of his personal count.