John Wayne broke a huge Oscars record with one of his greatest western movies, but Henry Fonda broke it with one of his own best films a little more than a decade later. For most of his career, Wayne seemed like a very unlikely contender to win an Academy Award. He was the Old Hollywood equivalent of an action hero, like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis. He rarely challenged himself dramatically and almost exclusively played unwavering heroes in black-and-white tales of good versus evil.
But later in his career, Wayne ditched his clean-cut on-screen image and started taking darker, more challenging roles. In The Searchers, he played one of cinema’s most iconic antiheroes, and in The Cowboys, he played a compassionate father figure to some young ranch hands. Wayne’s final western performance in The Shootist is a somber meditation on mortality as a remorseful gunslinger comes to the end of his life. When he finally won an Oscar, Wayne broke a major record — but he didn’t hold it for long.
Henry Fonda Broke John Wayne’s Record For Being The Oldest Best Actor Oscar Winner
Wayne Broke The Record With True Grit; Fonda Broke It With On Golden Pond
In 1970, Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his riveting turn as washed-up alcoholic U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in 1969’s True Grit. It’s easy to see why Wayne finally won the Oscar for this performance. Cogburn couldn’t be further from his usual on-screen persona; he’s a mean, hard-drinking, very reluctant hero. At age 62, this made Wayne the oldest Best Actor winner in Oscar history. In his acceptance speech, Wayne joked that if he’d known the role of Cogburn would’ve earned him an Oscar, he would’ve put on an eyepatch 35 years earlier.
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Wayne held this record for a little over a decade. In 1982, Fonda became the new oldest Best Actor winner when he won for On Golden Pond at age 76. Fonda plays a grumpy, retired professor who’s been married to his wife — played by Katharine Hepburn, who also won an Oscar — for many years. On Golden Pond marked Fonda’s final theatrical film appearance in a legendary Hollywood movie career that began in 1935.
Henry Fonda Held The Oldest Best Actor Winner Record For 39 Years – Until Anthony Hopkins Broke It
Hopkins Broke The Record In 2021 With The Father
Fonda held the record for oldest Best Actor winner for a whopping 39 years before it was finally broken by Anthony Hopkins in 2021. Hopkins won Best Actor for his poignant portrayal of an aging patriarch with dementia in The Fatherat the age of 83. This made Hopkins not only the oldest Best Actor winner, but the oldest Oscar winner in any of the four acting categories.
Oscars
The Oscars, also known as The Academy Awards, is an annual awards show celebrating workers in the film industry for their artistic and technical abilities. The Oscars are often considered the most prestigious awards show in the industry and date back to 1929. The 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10, 2024, and be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on ABC.