The Simpsons Oscar winners
by discoroux | created - 13 Jun 2015 | updated - 27 Jun 2015 | PublicThroughout its long run, The Simpsons has featured voice talents of many guest stars, some of which are Academy Award winners. (work in progress. There's a lot)
1. Meryl Streep
Actress | Out of Africa
Considered by many critics to be the greatest living actress, Meryl Streep has been nominated for the Academy Award an astonishing 21 times, and has won it three times. Meryl was born Mary Louise Streep in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to Mary Wolf (Wilkinson), a commercial artist, and Harry William ...
Triple Oscar winner Meryl Streep played the troublesome Jessica Lovejoy in the episode "Bart's Girlfriend" in 1994.
2. Dustin Hoffman
Actor | Tootsie
Dustin Lee Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California, to Lillian (Gold) and Harry Hoffman, who was a furniture salesman and prop supervisor for Columbia Pictures. He was raised in a Jewish family (from Ukraine, Russia-Poland, and Romania). Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955, ...
In what's probably the most memorable guest appearance, Dustin Hoffman played Mr. Bergstrom in the 1991 episode "Lisa's Substitute."
3. Mickey Rooney
Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. ...
Recipient of the juvenile award in 1938 and an honorary Oscar in 1983, Rooney played himself in the 1995 episode "Radioactive Man."
4. Mel Gibson
Actor | Braveheart
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, USA, as the sixth of eleven children of Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Anne Patricia (Reilly) Gibson (who died in December of 1990). His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is ...
Best director winner Mel Gibson also played himself, in the 1999 episode "Beyond Blunderdome."
5. Anne Hathaway
Actress | Les Misérables
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Kate McCauley Hathaway, an actress, and Gerald T. Hathaway, a lawyer, both originally from Philadelphia. She is of mostly Irish descent, along with English, German, and French. Her first major role came in the short-lived television series ...
Anne Hathaway actually won an Emmy for her work on The Simpsons in 2010, then won an Oscar two years later.
6. James Earl Jones
Actor | Rogue One
Widely regarded as the one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native USA and internationally, James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931 in Arkabutla, Mississippi. At an early age, he started to take dramatic lessons to calm himself down. It appeared to work as he has since starred ...
Recent honorary Oscar winner James Earl Jones made three guest appearances during the 1990's, including once as Maggie.
7. The Beatles
Soundtrack | The Beatles: Get Back
The Beatles were an English rock band that became arguably the most successful act of the 20th century. They contributed to music, film, literature, art, and fashion, made a continuous impact on popular culture and the lifestyle of several generations. Their songs and images carrying powerful ideas...
The Beatles collectively won the Oscar for best song score for their 1970 film Let it Be. While John Lennon died before The Simpsons hit the air, the remaining three all made a guest appearance on the show. The episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" in which George Harrison lent his voice even lampoons the legendary band.
8. Elizabeth Taylor
Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked ...
Elizabeth Taylor won two Oscars and also made two guest appearences on The Simpsons, first in 1992's "Maggie's First Word" and then 1993's "Krusty Gets Kancelled."
9. Susan Sarandon
Actress | Thelma & Louise
It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who ...
Susan Sarandon played Bart's ballet teacher in "Homer vs. Patty and Selma." She also played herself in "Bart Has Two Mommies" in 2006.
10. Tim Robbins
Actor | Mystic River
Born in West Covina, California, but raised in New York City, Tim Robbins is the son of former The Highwaymen singer Gil Robbins and actress Mary Robbins (née Bledsoe). Robbins studied drama at UCLA, where he graduated with honors in 1981. That same year, he formed the Actors' Gang theater group, ...
Sarandon's ex-partner Tim Robbins also made a guest appearance in the 1999 episode "The Grift of the Maji." He won best supporting actor five years later for Mystic River.
11. Kirk Douglas
Actor | The Final Countdown
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. ...
Screen legend and honorary Oscar winner Kirk Douglas made an appearance in "The Day the Violence Died."
12. Helen Hunt
Actress | As Good as It Gets
Helen Hunt began studying acting at the age of eight with her father, respected director and acting coach Gordon Hunt. A year later she made her professional debut and afterwards worked steadily in films, theatre and television.
Helen Hunt once played the love interest of bartender Moe, voiced by her real life husband (at the time) Hank Azaria.
13. Kim Basinger
Actress | L.A. Confidential
Kim Basinger was born December 8, 1953, in Athens, Georgia, the third of five children. Both her parents had been in entertainment, her dad had played big-band jazz, and her mother had performed water ballet in several Esther Williams movies. Kim was introspective, from her father's side. As a ...
She and her husband at the time Alec Baldwin played themselves in the 1998 episode "When You Dish Upon a Star."
14. Ron Howard
Producer | Arrested Development
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard is one of this generation's most popular directors. From the critically acclaimed dramas A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Apollo 13 (1995) to the hit comedies Parenthood (1989) and Splash (1983), he has created some of Hollywood's most memorable films.
Howard ...
Ron Howard also played himself in "When You Dish Upon a Star." We won Oscars for best picture and best director a few years later for A Beautiful Mind.
15. Anne Bancroft
Actress | The Graduate
Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, NY, the middle daughter of Michael Italiano (1905-2001), a dress pattern maker, and Mildred DiNapoli (1907-2010), a telephone operator. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared...
Anne Bancroft played Marge's therapist in season 6's "Fear of Flying."
16. Reese Witherspoon
Producer | Wild
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon was born on March 22, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Betty Witherspoon, a registered nurse & John Draper Witherspoon, a military surgeon. Reese spent the first 4 years of her life in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, where her father served as a lieutenant colonel in the ...
Reese made a guest appearance in the episode "The Bart Wants What it Wants" and then won an Oscar for "Walk the Line" four years later.
17. Olympia Dukakis
Actress | Moonstruck
Long a vital, respected thespian of the classic and contemporary stage, this grand lady did not become a household name and sought-after film actress until age 56 when she turned in a glorious, Oscar-winning performance as Cher's sardonic mother in the romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987). Movie (and ...
Grandpa was smitten with Zelda, voiced by Olympia Dukakis, in "The Old Man and the Key."
18. Marisa Tomei
Actress | My Cousin Vinny
Marisa Tomei was born on December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York, to Patricia "Addie" (Bianchi), a teacher of English, and Gary Tomei, a lawyer, both of Italian descent. Marisa has a brother, actor Adam Tomei. As a child, Marisa's mother frequently corrected her speech as to eliminate her heavy ...
Marissa Tomei voiced Sara Sloane, brief love interest of recent widower Ned Flanders, in 2003's "A Star is Born Again."
19. Michael Moore
Director | Bowling for Columbine
Michael Francis Moore was born in Flint, Michigan on April 23, 1954, and was raised in its Davison suburb. He is the son of Helen Veronica (Wall), a secretary, and Francis Richard Moore, who worked on an auto assembly line. He has Irish, as well as English and Scottish, ancestry.
Moore studied ...
Oscar winning documentarian made a cameo as himself in "The President Wore Pearls" in 2003.
20. Frances McDormand
Actress | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Frances Louise McDormand was born on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted by Canadian-born parents Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She ...
Nine years after winning best actress for "Fargo" she guest starred in the episode "Girls Just Want to Have Sums."
21. J.K. Simmons
Actor | Whiplash
J.K. Simmons is an American actor.
He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).
He had ...
Reigning best supporting actor J.K. Simmons made two separate guest appearances in season 18.
22. Natalie Portman
Actress | Black Swan
Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an ...
Four years before winning best actress, Natalie Portman was in the episode "Little Big Girl."
23. Rachel Weisz
Actress | The Constant Gardener
Rachel Hannah Weisz was born on 7 March, 1970, in London, U.K., to Edith Ruth (Teich), a psychoanalyst, and George Weisz, an inventor. Her parents both came to England around 1938. Her father is a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and her mother, from Vienna, was of Italian and Austrian Jewish heritage. ...
Best supporting actress winner Rachel Weisz was a guest star in the episode "How Munched is That Birdie in the Window?"
24. Halle Berry
Actress | Catwoman
Halle Maria Berry was born Maria Halle Berry on August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Oakwood, Ohio to Judith Ann Berry (née Hawkins), a psychiatric nurse & Jerome Jesse Berry, a hospital attendant. Her father was African-American and her mother is of mostly English and German descent. ...
Halle Berry portrayed herself in the 2011 episode "Angry Dad: The Movie."
25. Martin Landau
Actor | Ed Wood
Oscar-winning character actor Martin Landau was born on June 20, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York. At age 17, he was hired by the New York Daily News to work in the promotions department before he became a staff cartoonist and illustrator. In his five years on the paper, he served as the illustrator for ...
Martin Landau voiced the Great Raymondo, an old magician that takes Lisa as his apprentice in "The Great Simpsina."
26. Jeremy Irons
Actor | Dead Ringers
British actor Jeremy Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. He is the son of Barbara Anne Brereton (Sharpe) and Paul Dugan Irons, an accountant. Young Jeremy didn't prove very fond of figures. He visited mainland England only once a year. He wound up ...
The acclaimed British actor gave voice to of all things a bar towel in "Moe Goes From Rags to Riches."
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