Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress

It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance and chosen by the jury from the films in official competition slate at the festival.

At the 1st Cannes Film Festival held in 1946, Michèle Morgan was the first winner of this award for her performance in Pastoral Symphony, while Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Zoe Saldaña are the most recent winners in this category for their roles in Emilia Pérez at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in 2024.

The five films were A Big Family (1955), Brink of Life (1958), A World Apart (1988), Volver (2006), and Emilia Pérez (2024).

Vanessa Redgrave, Barbara Hershey, Helen Mirren, and Isabelle Huppert have won the most awards in this category, each winning twice.

Isabelle Adjani is the only actress to win for roles in two different films in the same competition, for her performances in Possession and Quartet in 1981.

Michèle Morgan was the first recipient for Pastoral Symphony (1946)
Bette Davis won for All About Eve (1950)
Jeanne Moreau won for Seven Days... Seven Nights (1960)
Sophia Loren won for Two Women (1961)
Katharine Hepburn won for Long Day's Journey into Night (1962)
Vanessa Redgrave won twice for Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) and Isadora (1969)
Isabelle Adjani won for two films in the same year, Possession and Quartet in 1981.
Isabelle Huppert won twice for Violette Nozière (1978) and The Piano Teacher (2001)
Dame Helen Mirren won twice for Cal (1984) and The Madness of King George (1995)
Meryl Streep won for A Cry in the Dark (1989)
Penélope Cruz won along with five of her castmates for Volver (2006)
Juliette Binoche won for Certified Copy (2010)
Kirsten Dunst won for Melancholia (2011)
Rooney Mara won for Carol (2015)
Renate Reinsve won for The Worst Person in the World (2021)