This Is The Oldest Oscar Winner Of All Time

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 17, 2:41PM EST · Published Jan 16, 10:27AM EST

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The first Academy Awards were given out in 1929 based on voting by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). What was a private dinner to host the awards ceremony has now become a public spectacle viewed by millions of people each year, in a television show that goes on for longer than three hours.

There are dozens of Oscar categories. Some are obscure and include Scientific and Technical Awards given for complex work like “miniature high-performance DPA lavalier microphones.”

However, the categories the American public knows best are those for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Director, and Best Picture.

Some technical awards have been given to people in their eighties, but the major awards generally go to people much younger. Tatum O’Neal was 10 years old when she won Best Supporting Actress for the film ‘Paper Moon’. which makes her the youngest actress to win one of the major awards.

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In the last several years older actors have brought home Oscars. Until recently, the distinction of the oldest winner of one of the major awards was Christopher Plummer for his Supporting Actor win for Beginners which was released in 2010. He won at age 82.

Last year, Plummer was replaced by one of the greatest English-speaking actors of the last several decades. At 83, Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor Award for his role in The Father, a film in which the main character is in the early stages of dementia.

Now known as Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE, he began working in Hollywood in the late 1960s. Director Richard Attenborough called Hopkins “the greatest actor of his generation.” In 1991, he won his other Oscar as Best Actor portraying psychopath Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

Hopkins lives in California but says Wales is his home country.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.