The Oscars' Language Barrier, and the Stars Who Broke It
Sophia Loren learned she had won from a phone call in Rome. Sixty-three years later, Zoe Saldaña won for a role she sang and spoke in Spanish. In between, the list stays remarkably short.
By The Birthday Edit
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November 6, 2026
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5 min read
Original editorial illustration generated with Recraft AI • Celebs Birthday Today
The Academy Awards are an American prize, voted on by an industry that works mostly in English, so it is not surprising that the acting trophies mostly go to performances in English. What is surprising is how rarely that has changed. Count the acting Oscars won mainly in a language other than English, from Sophia Loren in 1962 to today, and the list is startlingly short. Each name on it is a little story about a voting body listening to something it could not understand word for word, and deciding it did not need to.
How we counted
Counts vary at the edges
We include acting wins for roles performed mainly in a language other than English. Mixed-language roles are judged differently by different lists: Penélope Cruz's Vicky Cristina Barcelona role, which moves between English and Spanish, is sometimes counted and sometimes not, and Christoph Waltz's multilingual Inglourious Basterds role is a similar edge case. Sign-language performances are a separate story worth its own feature.
The Winners, in Order
Sophia Loren
Best Actress, Two Women (Italian) — awarded April 9, 1962 • born September 20, 1934
Guinness World Records lists her win for Vittorio De Sica's Two Women as the first Oscar awarded for a performance in a foreign-language film. She did not go to Los Angeles. She waited up in Rome, and at 6:39 the next morning, Rome time, the phone rang: it was Cary Grant. "It's wonderful, Sophia, it's wonderful," he told her. As the story goes, she then went to check on the sauce cooking in her kitchen.
Best Supporting Actor, The Godfather Part II (Sicilian) — 1975 ceremony • born August 17, 1943
Playing the young Vito Corleone, De Niro spoke nearly the whole role in Sicilian, and won for the same man Marlon Brando had won Best Actor for playing two years earlier. Guinness credits the pair with the most Oscars awarded for portraying the same character.
Best Actor, Life Is Beautiful (Italian) — 71st Academy Awards, 1999 • born October 27, 1952
Life Is Beautiful also won Foreign Language Film that night, and when it was announced Benigni skipped the aisle and walked across the tops of the seats toward the stage, steadied by Steven Spielberg. When he came back up to accept Best Actor, he joked: "This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English!"
Best Supporting Actor, Traffic (Spanish) — 73rd Academy Awards, 2001 • born February 19, 1967
The Puerto Rican actor played Javier Rodriguez, a Mexican police officer, in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Soderbergh had the Mexican characters speak Spanish, so most of his Oscar-winning performance arrived with subtitles. Del Toro worked with a dialect coach and spent time in Tijuana shadowing local police to get it right.
Best Actress, La Vie en Rose (French) — 80th Academy Awards, February 24, 2008 • born September 30, 1975
Loren's Best Actress win stood alone for nearly half a century. Then came Cotillard's Édith Piaf, the first Best Actress win for a non-English performance since Loren, and still the first and only acting Oscar won for a French-language role.
Best Supporting Actress, Minari (Korean) — 93rd Academy Awards, April 25, 2021 • born June 19, 1947
At 73, Youn became the first Korean actress to win an Oscar, then stole the night: she forgave everyone for mispronouncing her name, said she doesn't believe in competition, and teased presenter Brad Pitt, whose company helped produce Minari, for never visiting the set. Minari is an American film, but its dialogue is predominantly Korean, which is why the Golden Globes had placed it in their foreign-language category.
Zoe Saldaña
Best Supporting Actress, Emilia Pérez (Spanish) — 97th Academy Awards, March 2, 2025 • born June 19, 1978
"I am a proud child of immigrant parents," Saldaña said, calling herself "the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award." She dedicated the moment to her grandmother, who came to the U.S. in 1961, saying that winning for a role where she got to "sing and speak in Spanish" would have delighted her. One more rhyme, noted by TheWrap: she and Benigni are the only actors to win for films also nominated in the international feature category, and both were 46 when they did it.
Look at the birth dates above and something odd jumps out. Youn Yuh-jung: June 19, 1947. Zoe Saldaña: June 19, 1978. And one more Oscar winner shares the date: Jean Dujardin, born June 19, 1972, who in 2012 became the first French actor to win Best Actor, for The Artist, a nearly silent film. Three winners, one birthday, and not one of the three won for a performance mainly in English. It means nothing, of course, which is exactly the kind of coincidence we love.
The 2026 Oscars looked ready to lengthen the list. Wagner Moura became the first Brazilian ever nominated for Best Actor, for The Secret Agent. Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas became the first Norwegian performers nominated for acting in Norwegian, and, by TheWrap's count, Stellan Skarsgård became the first performer from an international film nominated for Best Supporting Actor, all three for Sentimental Value. That film won Best International Feature. All four acting trophies still went to English-language roles: Michael B. Jordan, Jessie Buckley, Sean Penn and Amy Madigan.
Our read: the short list is less a verdict on these performances than on how hard it is to get voters to sit down with subtitles in the first place. Every name here cleared that bar before the acting could even be judged, and then, like Benigni, didn't need much English at all. For more stars beyond Hollywood, see the global superstars America keeps underrating, or the pioneers who opened doors before and alongside these wins.
Which of these wins broke the barrier most memorably?
WORTH THE GROUP CHAT?
Pick your side, then send it to someone who will argue back.
Loren, Benigni, Cotillard, Youn Yuh-jung, Saldaña: the few stars who won acting Oscars for roles not in English. Two even share a birthday with a third winner.
Sources & further reading
We verify dates against the Celebs Birthday Today database and link to the strongest available primary or authoritative sources.
Editorial method: every date, award and quote here is tied to Guinness World Records, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Associated Press reporting, TheWrap, Grantland, Remezcla, The Week and Wikipedia's documented lists. Which performances count as 'not in English' varies by list, and we say so above. The closing reading is opinion, labeled as such. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any person or organization named, including the Academy.
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