14 Youngest Academy Award Winners, From Shirley Temple to Adrien Brody

The light of the Academy Awards has shone on many creatives and artists, some of whom were quite young in their careers when their work was recognized. The prestigious event is the pinnacle of award season, and while winning isn’t the stick by which talent should be measured, an Oscar is an acknowledgement of one’s skill in their craft.

In the following list, you’ll find 14 of the youngest recipients of an Academy Award, ranging from school-aged children to creatives who barely cracked their 30s when they won. But they all share one thing in common: their abilities in their field were so undeniable that they beat the odds and prevailed in categories with more seasoned and veteran members of the Hollywood establishment.

1. Carl Laemmle, Jr.
2. Floyd Crosby
3. Shirley Temple
4. Tatum O’Neal
5. Milena Canonero
6. Timothy Hutton
7. Rick Baker
8. Prince
9. Marlee Matlin
10. David Brenner
11. Ben Affleck
12. Adrien Brody
13. Markéta Irglová
14. Damien Chazelle

Carl Laemmle, Jr.

The son and namesake of Universal Pictures’ founder began supervising films when he was 19 years old. While he had some industry experience, having penned The Collegians, a popular series of two-reel comedies, Carl Laemmle, Jr. didn’t have enough credits to his name to garner respect in Tinseltown. But his father still put him in charge of film production at the studio.

Laemmle’s efforts paid off in 1931 when All Quiet on the Western Front won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 3rd annual ceremony. He was 22 years old, making him one of the youngest producers to ever win the award. While he never saw the same level of success with his other films, Laemmle was responsible for developing Universal’s iconic horror niche. He produced Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy.

Floyd Crosby

At 31 years old, Floyd Crosby became one of the youngest Academy Award recipients for Best Cinematography. He’d been recognized for his work on Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, a docufiction, and his first photography credit on a feature film. The year was 1932.

Crosby went on to film over 100 productions and specialized in documentaries like Matto Grosso and The River. While serving during World War II in the Air Transport Command, he made training films for pilots and combat documentaries. In the '50s and '60s, Crosby’s most creative partnership was with director Roger Corman. Together, they made low-budget horror and sci-fi movies such as Attack of the Crab Monsters and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Outside of his own prolific career, Crosby is best known as the father of rock legend David Crosby, a founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Shirley Temple

As a child, Shirley Temple was known as America’s sweetheart for her box-office hits and her ability to bring joy to the nation during the Great Depression. She began her career at three years old and won the now-discontinued juvenile Academy Award at six. 

Temple was the first recipient of the honorary award, which was presented in 1935. She’s also the youngest actor to ever receive the miniature Oscar recognizing an under-18 talent for their contribution to the film industry. Temple starred in movies up to her early 20s and then transitioned to TV for her series, Shirley Temple’s Storybook. 

By 1967, Temple was focused on politics as a member of the Republican Party. She was appointed by President Richard Nixon as an ambassador to the UN, was the first woman to serve as Chief of Protocol (serving under President Gerald R. Ford),  and was appointed ambassador of Czechoslovakia in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush.

In 1999, Temple received a lifetime achievement medal from the Kennedy Center for her work as a diplomat. The event was hosted by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Tatum O’Neal

The youngest recipient of an Oscar award was 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal in 1974. She won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Addie Loggins in Paper Moon. O’Neal had starred opposite her father, Ryan, in the critically acclaimed dramedy. It was her first role and just the beginning of her career. Her second film was the hit sports comedy The Bad News Bears.

However, O’Neal’s personal life was one plagued by upheaval and instability due to the volatile personalities and drug habits of her parents. As she grew older and developed her own issues with substances, her career began to suffer. But O’Neal is still acting. Her latest film credit was 2019’s Not to Forget.

Milena Canonero

With one iconic film after another, Milena Canonero has had a storied career as a costume designer. She was 26 years old when she won Best Costume Design, along with Ulla-Britt Söderlund,  at the 48th Oscars ceremony in 1976 and became the youngest person to receive the honor. At the time, Canonero only had one other credit under her belt—A Clockwork Orange—but it was the historical drama Barry Lyndon that caught the Academy’s eye.

Six years later, Canonero would win the prize alone for Chariots of Fire, another period piece. In fact, all nine of her Academy Award nominations have been period pieces. Canonero is a four-time Oscar winner whose work includes The Godfather Part III, Marie Antoinette, Single White Female, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Megalopolis.

Timothy Hutton

Leverage fans know Timothy Hutton for his role as Nathan Ford, the leader of the team in the TNT hit series. But before he stepped into the shoes of a heist mastermind, Hutton had made Oscars history as the youngest man to receive the award for Best Supporting Actor. He won the honor for Ordinary People, Robert Redford’s feature directorial debut, in 1981 at the 53rd Academy Awards. Hutton was 20 years old.

Rick Baker

The inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup went to Rick Baker for An American Werewolf in London. The year was 1982; he was 31 years old and remains the youngest person to receive the award. He also holds the record for the most wins in this category, having taken home seven out of the 11 nominations he’d received before retiring in 2015 due to the rise of CGI.

Baker has been referred to as a “monster kid” because of his extensive work on sci-fi and horror productions. He apprenticed under Dick Smith and served as his assistant on The Exorcist. Baker is known for his work in comedy, too. He did the make-up for the Eddie Murphy movies Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, and Norbit, as well as Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’s Men in Black and Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Prince

Purple Rain has an undeniable place in film history, but it was Prince’s abilities as a composer that won the icon an Oscar in 1985. The artist was 26 when he took home Best Original Song Score for his work on the movie, which launched his already bright star to new heights. He’s the youngest recipient of the award.

Prince was a prolific musician. His discography includes four soundtrack albums aside from Purple Rain: Parade for his film Under the Cherry Moon, Tim Burton’s Batman, Graffiti Bridge for Purple Rain’s sequel of the same name, and Spike Lee’s Girl 6.

Marlee Matlin

When Marlee Matlin won Best Actress at the 1987 Academy Awards, she not only became the youngest woman to win the category at 21 years old, but also the first deaf actor to win an Oscar. However, as she mentioned in her documentary Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, it was marred by her abusive relationship with her Children of a Lesser God co-star William Hurt.

Matlin’s success opened the door for her to have more opportunities in film, but she’s best known for her work in television through her groundbreaking roles on Reasonable Doubts, The West Wing, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The L Word, Switched at Birth, and more.

Matlin returned to the Oscars in 2022, 35 years after her win, in support of Coda. The film won Best Picture and is one of the only modern works with deaf actors in lead roles.

The actress is also known for her activism. She’s credited as being an integral figure in the fight for closed captioning to be a feature of televised programming and streaming services as technology evolves.

David Brenner

One of the youngest editors to win Best Film Editing was David Brenner. He was 27 when he and co-editor Joe Hutshing received the award in 1990 for their work on Oliver Stone’s Tom Cruise-led anti-war drama Born on the Fourth of July. It was Brenner’s second feature and the second film in Stone’s Vietnam War trilogy, which includes Platoon and Heaven & Earth. Brenner worked on all three movies.

Brenner edited films across genres, but the last decade of his career was dominated by action-driven movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Zack Snyder’s run of superhero films for DC. The editor passed away in 2022 while he was at home working on James Cameron’s Avatar sequels.

Ben Affleck

The average moviegoer knows Ben Affleck as an actor, but he’s also a filmmaker in every sense of the word. He won his first Academy Award not for his acting, but for his abilities as a writer. He, along with his best friend and frequent collaborator Matt Damon, took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The year was 1998, and he was 25 years old, just edging out Damon (who was 27) to become the youngest screenwriter to win the category. 

The duo was recognized for Good Will Hunting, a movie Damon had started working on at Harvard for a playwright class instead of the one-act play he was supposed to be writing. Together, they reworked Damon’s script into the well-beloved Boston classic it’s known as today.

Affleck has written five movies since his Oscar-winning debut as a screenwriter. He’s also won another Oscar—Best Picture for Argo in 2013 as a producer.

Adrien Brody

While Marlee Matlin is the youngest person to receive the Best Actress award, Adrien Brody is the youngest to win Best Actor. He took the Oscars stage in 2003, accepting the award for his role in The Pianist. Brody was 29 and famously kissed fellow Academy Award winner Halle Berry in a moment the two would recreate 22 years later when Brody was nominated for Best Actor again, this time for The Brutalist. Brody would go on to win the award.

The actor also holds the Guinness World record for the longest Oscars acceptance speech. He spoke for 5 minutes and 36 seconds in 2025. Winners are encouraged to keep their remarks to a brief 45 seconds, but Brody flouted this window both times he’s received the honor.

Markéta Irglová

In 2008, “Falling Slowly” from the movie Once was an inescapable indie hit that made listeners swoon. Markéta Irglová, a 19-year-old Czech-Icelandic singer-songwriter, had co-written the song with Irish musician Glen Hansard, sweeping them both up in the magic of an Oscar win. The pair took home Best Original Song. 

Irglová not only became the youngest person to be recognized by the Academy for this category but also the youngest to be awarded in a non-acting field. Three years after their win, she and Hansard disbanded their partnership known as the Swell Season. They reunited over a decade later and released Forward in 2025, their first new album together in 16 years.

Damien Chazelle

Acclaimed director Damien Chazelle knew he wanted to be a filmmaker at a young age. His father, Bernard, shared in 2017 that making movies had been on his son’s mind for about 30 years. Considering Chazelle was 32 when he won Best Director at that year’s Oscars, he’d been dreaming of perfecting the craft of filmmaking since he was a toddler.

Chazelle won for La La Land, a movie where he combined his love of jazz with an appreciation for Old Hollywood in a screenplay that resonated with audiences. His comparative youth to his fellow directors who’ve been recognized by the Academy garnered a lot of attention at the time. Chazelle has since gone on to make the well-received First Man and the critically panned Babylon.

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