The Elusive Fourth Oscar

Meryl Streep's Oscar win for The Iron Lady meant many things.  First, it meant that after waiting 29 years and twelve nominations, Streep fans finally got to see Meryl pick up another Oscar.  Considering how much her fan base has grown in the past decade, this was a big moment for all of her fans (myself included) who weren't even alive when she won for Sophie's Choice (myself included).

It also meant that Meryl was now one of only five actors to have won a third Academy Award; Streep would make that number six when she handed off a trophy to Daniel Day-Lewis the following year for Lincoln.  This also means that both she and Day-Lewis are now poised for the long held record enjoyed by Katharine Hepburn: winning four Academy Awards.

Hepburn did this for 1981's On Golden Pond, over thirty years ago, and no one has been so well-poised to take her on as Streep and Day-Lewis, so I figured it would be worth exploring what exactly happened to the careers of the four other people who have won a third statue.  Here's a peak:

Walter Brennan
His First Three Oscars: Come and Get It, Kentucky, and 1940's The Westerner
Age at Third Oscar: 47
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 3 (Brennan's Oscar statistics are staggering)
Number of Nominations Achieved after Third Oscar: 1 (for 1941's Sergeant York)
Life After the Third Oscar: Brennan is one of the oddest aspects of Oscar history.  His winning three trophies in five years puts him in the company of people like Meryl Streep and Kate Hepburn, but his career doesn't remotely resemble theirs.  While Brennan did receive an Oscar nomination in 1941 (losing to Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley), because of the lack of precursor awards in those days (the Globes hadn't even begun when Brennan was winning his third trophy), it's hard to say if he was consistently snubbed after his third Oscar.  He so quickly moved to television in the 1950's and 1960's that I doubt he ever came close again post his work in Sergeant York)

Katherine Hepburn
Her First Three Oscars: Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and 1968's The Lion in Winter
Age at Third Oscar: 61
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 11 (spread out over four decades)
Number of Nominations Achieved After Third Oscar: 1 (On Golden Pond, for which she won)
Life After Third Oscar: Hepburn should serve as both inspiration and as a cautionary tale to Streep and Day-Lewis.  Hepburn continued to work rather heavily in the 1970's, but after her third Oscar couldn't seem to get nominated for any awards, especially an Oscar.  She had far more success in other mediums, and regularly found herself on the side of bad reviews and occasionally poor box office.  While the Emmy nominations came pouring in, only On Golden Pond got her remotely close to an Oscar, and of course she went on to win it.

Ingrid Bergman
Her First Three Oscars: Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express
Age at Third Oscar: 59
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 6
Number of Nominations Achieved after Third Oscar: 1 (for 1978's Autumn Sonata)
Life After Third Oscar: Bergman was already in the twilight of her career when she won a surprise third Oscar for her work in Murder on the Orient Express.  She in fact would be making only two more feature films and one television film, and two of these films would be huge awards successes for Bergman.  One, Autumn Sonata, won her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations (she lost both to Jane Fonda in Coming Home) and the other, A Woman Called Golda won her an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

Jack Nicholson
His First Three Oscars: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Terms of Endearment, and As Good As It Gets
Age at Third Oscar: 70
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 11
Number of Nominations after Third Oscar: 1 (for 2002's About Schmidt)
Life After Third Oscar: Nicholson, though considerably older than Streep or Day-Lewis, may serve as the most likely mirror to how their careers will turn out after their third trophies.  Jack was a major box office star in 1997, and went on to make a number of major hit or critically-acclaimed films, including About Schmidt, Something's Gotta Give, and The Departed.  Jack, however, found it much harder to get nominated for an Oscar after As Good As It Gets.  Both Something's Gotta Give and The Departed gained Nicholson Globe nominations, but he couldn't translate that with the Academy (especially odd considering that The Departed was a Best Picture winner and Nicholson was the chief villain).  He was also a frontrunner (possibly the frontrunner, depending on how you swung with the Day-Lewis predictors at the time) for his fourth Oscar in 2002, but couldn't seal the deal and Adrien Brody became the surprise winner for The Pianist.

And that's it-not a large enough sample size to say anything definitive for Streep and Day-Lewis (though that one nomination only after a third win thing sure has to make them feel a bit nervous), but it certainly shows that it won't be easy for either actor to pick up their fourth trophy, despite decades of critical acclaim preceding their victories for The Iron Lady and Lincoln.