Every Performer Who Has Won An EGOT

After years in the business, established actors, musicians, and performers often rack up plenty of major awards, but it takes an incredible amount of talent to cross different media and earn recognition in multiple arenas. Over the years, a small yet incredibly diverse group of creative talents have won an elusive, nearly impossible distinction: the EGOT, a quadruple lineup of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.

Obviously, conquering the worlds of television, music, theatre, and film all at once is a pretty hard task to accomplish, but from composers to actors to directors, 15 artists to date have achieved this Herculean goal. However, it's important to note that everyone on this list has won their EGOT with competitive awards. There are also stars like Barbra Streisand, Quincy Jones, Liza Minnelli, and James Earl Jones who technically have all four awards, but at least one is a non-competitive recognition like a lifetime achievement award or an honorary statue.

As awards season comes around year after year, performers who have won three out of the four awards vie for their chance to close out their collection. To date, only these 15 people have achieved EGOT status. Here's the full list of these multitalented masters.

The second person (and first woman) to achieve EGOT status was the esteemed Helen Hayes, who passed away in 1993 after a long and illustrious career. Hayes won a whopping seven major awards in the time period between 1932 and 1980 — the longest span of any EGOT winner to date. Not only did she achieve EGOT status, she marked another milestone specifically for actors as the first ever person to win the "Triple Crown" of Acting, meaning that she won an Emmy, Oscar, and Tony, the three major acting awards. 

Hayes won her first award of the four at the 1932 Academy Awards, winning Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Sin of Madelon Claudet, later winning her second for Best Supporting Actress in 1970 for Airport. She also won two competitive Tony Awards — one in 1947 for Happy Birthday and one in 1958 for Time Remembered, both for Best Actress, Dramatic — winning her final major award in 1980 with a lifetime achievement award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Theatre at the Tonys. Before that, she also took home a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actress for the anthology show Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and a Grammy for her spoken word album, Great American Documents. 

By the time Sir John Gielgud passed away in 2000, his incredible career had stretched across eight entire decades. It's not entirely surprising, then, that he was the fourth ever person to win a full EGOT. Gielgud made history beyond that as well, becoming the first gay actor to ever win an EGOT, as well as being the oldest winner in the club, winning his final award at the age of 87. Known for his extensive Shakespearean resume, Gielgud was knighted in 1953, and his eponymous theater, the Gielgud Theatre, is one of the busiest playhouses in London to this day.

Though he made his film debut in 1924, he had his first big hit in 1964 with Becket, kicking off his time on the big screen in a huge way, and Gielgud went on to appear in over 60 films by the late 1990s. Gielgud won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1981 for his role in Arthur, which was preceded by a Tony Award in 1961 for directing Big Fish, Little Fish. In 1979, Gielgud scored a Grammy Award for his spoken word album Ages of Man, and finally, he finished out his EGOT in 1991 with a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Special thanks to his starring role in the British series Summer's Lease. 

Another composer who went on to win an EGOT, Marvin Hamlisch surpassed Richard Rodgers' legacy by becoming the first EGOT winner to have the exact same project win multiple letters of the EGOT. Hamlisch also has the most Academy Awards of any Academy Award winner, with an impressive three Oscars (all in musical categories). If you're unfamiliar with Hamlisch by name alone, you've almost certainly heard his original scores and songs, from A Chorus Line to the music of The Way We Were.

In fact, The Way We Were was his ticket to EGOT status; Hamlisch scored the film, which stars Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford as two lovers who just can't make it work, and he also wrote the title song. Both the score and "The Way We Were" netted Oscars and Grammy Awards for Hamlisch in 1974, the same year he also won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist of the Year and Best Pop Instrumental Performance (for "The Entertainer"). He also won an Oscar for scoring 1973's The Sting. 

For his Emmys, Hamlisch worked with Streisand once again in 1995, netting two statues for music direction as well as music & lyrics for Barbra: The Concert, and went on to win two more Emmys for live concerts. Hamlisch's most famous project also ensured his legacy: not only did A Chorus Line win Hamlisch his sole Tony, but it also won the Pulitzer Prize.

It makes perfect sense that a comedic trailblazer and legend like Mel Brooks would have conquered all four major artistic awards, a feat which he completed in 2001. The mind behind beloved comedies like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers, just to name a few, is an awards overachiever just like many of his EGOT cohorts. Beyond an EGOT, Brooks has a National Medal of Arts (bestowed by President Barack Obama), a 2009 Kennedy Center Honor, a 2013 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, and most of his films hold the top spots on AFI's list top 100 comedy films of the 20th century.

Brooks picked up his first major award at the Oscars in 1968, where he won for Best Original Screenplay for The Producers, which proved unbelievably successful for the venerated director. The eventual Broadway adaptation of The Producers netted both Tony Awards (for Best Book, Best Score, and Best Musical) and Grammy Awards (for Best Original Show Album and Best Long Form Music Video, the latter of which is a making-of documentary about The Producers). Brooks has also won a total of four Emmy awards; though he kicked off his Emmy wins in 1967 for Best Writing in Variety for The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special, his more impressive Emmys feat is his three year streak as Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy for Mad About You from 1997 to 1999.

One of the most beloved and recognizable faces in Hollywood also happens to be an EGOT winner, which should hardly come as a surprise when you study her storied career. Whoopi Goldberg completed her EGOT in 2002, when she made history as the first African American performer to ever win all four awards, as well as the first artist to win two parts of the EGOT during the same year.

In 1986, Goldberg kicked off her EGOT quest with a Grammy Award for, unsurprisingly, Best Comedy Performance. She followed that in 1991 with an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Ghost — not exactly a movie overflowing with typical Oscars appeal, which just goes to show how good her performance was. In 2002, she picked up her remaining two awards, with an Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Special for Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel (on which she served as a host) as well as a Tony Award for producing that year's revival of Thoroughly Modern Millie. 

Despite the fact that she won a second Emmy Award in 2009 for Outstanding Talk Show Host (for The View), neither of Goldberg's Emmys are Primetime Emmy Awards (they're both Daytime Emmys), which has led some to wonder if she should be included in the list — a point of view Goldberg herself lampooned on 30 Rock. 

The youngest ever EGOT winner in history, songwriter Robert Lopez rounded out his EGOT at just 39 years old, and even completed the feat in the shortest amount of time, winning all four awards in a span of just ten years. He is also the first ever performer to win what has since been termed a "Double EGOT," meaning that he has at least two wins in every single category. On top of all that, he is also the first artist of Filipino and Asian descent to take home EGOT gold.

Lopez officially began his EGOT journey in 2004 when he took home his first of three eventual Tonys for Avenue Q's score. He ended up winning Best Score again, alongside Best Book, in 2011 for The Book of Mormon, the latter of which is an award he shares with South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker (Lopez also has a Grammy for Book of Mormon's cast recording). Lopez has two Daytime Emmys for music & composition for the children's show Wonder Pets, but his real prize pig is Frozen's hit song "Let it Go," which won him yet another Grammy in 2015, as well as one of his two Academy Awards, both of which he shares with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez. The duo eventually won Best Original Song at the Oscars for a second time in 2018 thanks to "Remember Me" from the Pixar film Coco. 

2018 was a good year for EGOTs, thanks to Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert — three people joined the illustrious EGOT club, which is a lot, considering how low the total is to begin with. Tim Rice, alongside his long time collaborator Andrew Lloyd Webber, was one of the three. Rice, who has also been winning qualifying awards since 1980, shares many of his honors with Lloyd Webber, including the Emmy that made them both EGOT winners. 

Rice and Lloyd Webber share Tonys, Grammys, and an Oscar for Evita and its film adaptation, as well as the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, but Rice has plenty of awards in his own right. Rice won both a Grammy and an Academy Award for "A Whole New World" from the Disney film Aladdin, another Oscar for The Lion King's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," and yet another Grammy and a Tony Award for Aida.