An Oscar can change an actor’s career, bringing greater prestige, stronger opportunities, and validation from Hollywood peers. As the 2027 Oscar season kicks off, historical data offers a counterintuitive warning: actors who have already won may have a harder time winning again. This isn’t a spoiler: It’s statistics.
A 2025 University of Chicago economics study found that actors who have previously won one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ four acting awards — Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress — are statistically less likely to win again when nominated. In a modern five-nominee race, each contender would have a 20% chance of winning, all things being equal. But according to the study by Pablo A. Peña, a previous acting Oscar winner has a 10.6% chance of winning again, based on an analysis of data from all Academy Awards ceremonies through 2025.
“One way to process this is if I am a new, up-and-coming actor, and you put me up against Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson, who have many awards between them, people could look at the new guy and say, ‘Come on, this guy has already won,’” Peña tells Gold Derby. “It doesn’t mean [the new contender] is going to get it for sure, but if it really pushes your probability up above the average.”
The odds vary by category. In Peña’s analysis, previously winning lead nominees had a 9.6% chance of winning again, compared with 11.8% for previously winning supporting nominees.
If you apply this analysis to the front-runners for the 2027 Academy Awards per the Gold Derby odds, the race that would be most impacted is Best Supporting Actress, which has two former winners in contention: The Odyssey‘s Anne Hathaway and Penélope Cruz (in the running with The Invite and La Bola Negra). Based on the University of Chicago study, the odds would tip in favor of Samantha Morton (The Odyssey), Tao Okamoto (All of a Sudden), or Amanda Seyfried (You Can See Everything).
Elsewhere, Best Supporting Actor hopeful Sam Rockwell (Wild Horse Nine) has longer odds given his previous win for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, while Julianne Moore (The Debut) would be have a statistically disadvantage in Best Actress thanks to her 2014 win for Still Alice. The only race not affected is Best Actor, where none of the Top 5 five hopefuls has yet to win an Oscar.
A case study: Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet had three previous Best Actress nominations before winning for The Reader at the 2009 ceremony. She had also received two Best Supporting Actress nominations.
In that Best Actress race, Winslet competed against two other performers (Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie) who had previously won acting Oscars and two who had not (Anne Hathaway and Melissa Leo). Based on Peña’s analysis, Winslet’s estimated chance of winning was nearly 27%.
Why past winners may struggle to win again
Three factors contribute to an acting Oscar win: the performance, the project, and the voters. Peña’s study does not quantify how much each factor contributes, but its findings suggest two possible explanations for why previous winners may have a harder time winning again.
One possible explanation is the appeal of novelty: Voters may be more inclined to reward an actor who has yet to win. It could be the excitement of a fresh new face, an actor shifting into a new light, or the feeling that an actor is overdue after previous nominations. That could lead voters to reward an actor’s body of work rather than a specific performance. Whether that is conscious voter behavior can only be known by asking voters about their ballots, but these ideas can shape public narratives and potentially influence opinions.
A second possibility is that competition changes between an actor’s first win and later nominations — both in the individual performances and in the overall quality of the films. There is also the challenge of competing with the performance that earned an actor’s first win. If voters saw that win as career-defining, later work may be judged in its shadow.
Peña says he was surprised to uncover this statistical trend while analyzing acting nominations and wins at the Academy Awards. He was motivated by the 2025 Best Actress race where Mikey Madison won for Anora, defeating nominees including Demi Moore for The Substance. Neither actress had previously won an individual acting Oscar. Peña says the result helped spur him to finish the study, which first looked at how age impacted winners. At the 2025 ceremony, Gold Derby predicted a close race, with Madison ahead by 0.33 percentage points.
“Before doing this study, I did not expect to see that being a prior winner would be a factor on a nominee winning again,” he says.
As Peña’s analysis suggests, an Oscar win may change the calculus. A first statuette can recognize a standout performance or reward an overdue contender. A later nomination brings a different set of variables. Whether voters consciously factor an actor’s past wins into their decisions remains unknown, but the data suggests that winning once does not make winning again any easier.
That golden statuette may open doors, but it could also be a doorstop for future awards.
