12 Women Whose Biggest Wins Came After 50, Like Jean Smart’s Eighth Emmy at 75

Jean Smart turned 75 on Sept. 13, 2026, and the next night she won the Emmy for lead actress in a comedy for the fifth and final season of Hacks. She won that award for every season of the show, starting in 2021, when she was 70.

It was her eighth Emmy, which ties the record for the most Emmys ever won for acting. Her first three came for Frasier, in 2000 and 2001, and for Samantha Who? in 2008. This time she was greeted with a standing ovation when she walked onstage.

Youn Yuh-jung had been acting in South Korea for decades when she played Soonja, a grandmother in a Korean family that moves to rural Arkansas, in Minari. On April 25, 2021, at 73, she won the Oscar for best supporting actress, and NPR noted she was the first Korean to win the category.

In her speech she thanked her sons: “And I like to thank to my two boys, who made me go out and work,” she said. “Beloved sons, Eol and Nuel, this is the result because Mommy work so hard.”

In September 2024, at 76, Kathy Bates started playing the title role in the new Matlock on CBS. She had been close to leaving acting. “I had one foot out the door until I read the script for Matlock,” she said on the Emmys red carpet that year.

In July 2025, at 77, she was nominated for lead actress in a drama series, and The Hollywood Reporter listed her as the oldest nominee in that category’s history. She has since said she has no plans to retire.

Demi Moore had been nominated for Golden Globes three times in the 1990s, for Ghost and If These Walls Could Talk, and had never won. On Jan. 5, 2025, at 62, she won the Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for The Substance.

On stage she said she had been acting for “over 45 years” and that “this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” TODAY reported. “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress,” she said. Weeks later, she got her first Oscar nomination.

Sheryl Lee Ralph had been acting since the 1970s and was the original Deena in Dreamgirls on Broadway in 1981. In September 2022, at 65, she won the Emmy for supporting actress in a comedy for Abbott Elementary.

She opened her speech by singing Dianne Reeves’ “Endangered Species” a cappella. “I am here to tell you this is what believing looks like,” she said. “This is what striving looks like and don’t you ever, ever give up on you.” TheWrap noted she was the first Black woman to win the category in 35 years.

For decades, Jennifer Coolidge was the actress who stole scenes in other people’s movies, from Best in Show to Legally Blonde. In 2022, Variety wrote that after decades “as a secret weapon the industry didn’t quite know how to use,” she had “just landed her first Emmy nomination,” at 60, for playing Tanya in The White Lotus.

She won that Emmy in September 2022, at 61, and won again for the show’s second season in January 2024, at 62.

Michelle Yeoh became a movie star in Hong Kong action films and later made it in Hollywood. On March 12, 2023, at 60, she won the Oscar for best actress for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the first Asian woman to win the category.

“And, ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime. Never give up,” she said in her speech. She dedicated the award to her 84-year-old mother.

In May 2023, at 81, Martha Stewart appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and became the oldest model to grace its cover, the AP reported.

She announced it herself on Instagram and wrote that she hoped the cover would inspire people “to try new things, no matter what stage of life you’re in.”

Helen Mirren had been a star of British stage and screen for decades when she played Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. On Feb. 25, 2007, at 61, she won the Oscar for best actress.

“I’ve got my purse in one hand, my earring in the other,” she began, according to the Academy’s speech archive. “You know my sister told me that all kids love to get gold stars and this is the biggest and the best gold star that I have ever had in my life.”

Susan Lucci played Erica Kane on All My Children for more than 40 years, and for most of the 1980s and ’90s her name was shorthand for the nominee who never wins. She was passed over 18 times.

In May 1999, at 52, she finally won the Daytime Emmy for lead actress. In her 2011 memoir, All My Life, she wrote about that night as one of the milestones of her career.

Bonnie Raitt had been making records since the early 1970s when her song Just Like That came out in 2022. On Feb. 5, 2023, at 73, it won the Grammy for song of the year, ahead of songs by much younger pop stars.

She took home two more Grammys that night, for best American roots song and best Americana performance.

Cher released Believe in late 1998. In March 1999, when she was 52, it reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for four weeks, and it became the year-end No. 1 song of 1999.

Grammy.com counts No. 1 spots in 21 countries and 11 million copies sold. It also set a record for the longest gap between No. 1 hits in Hot 100 history: 33 years and seven months.