76-year-old singer Sir Elton John has won the first Emmy Award of his career, becoming the 19th person to win an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy – and achieving the so-called EGOT status. Let’s look at the most recent ones!
Scott Rudin became the first (primarily) producer to complete his EGOT in 2012, when he won a Grammy Award for his original Broadway cast of The Book of Mormon. This award came on the heels of his Emmy for He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, his Oscar for Best Picture for No Country for an Old Men, and 9 Tony Awards for unforgettable performances in such films as Doubt, Fences, and of course the aforementioned Book of Mormon musical. Rudin has won 18 Tony Awards to date. Ropert Lopez is also worth mentioning because he is the youngest EGOT winner in history, having won the title at the age of 39 after winning an Oscar in 2014 for his song “Let It Go” in the film Frozen. Previously, he won two Emmys for Wonder Pets!, three Grammys for The Book of Mormon and Frozen, and three Tony Awards for Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon. Lopez is the first person to win EGOT status twice, and to date he is the only winner to have won both EGOT awards in the competitive category (Mel Brooks’ second Oscar in 2023 was a special award). He also won his second in a row very quickly, in just 7 years and 8 months.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, along with the English musical classic, won the EGOT Award on 9 September 2018, along with John Legend and Tim Rice, when they shared the Primetime Emmy for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. The composer won an Academy Award for Evita’s “You Must Love Me” and has previously won four Grammy Awards, including a Legend Award – as well as six Tony Awards for such now-classic performances as Evita, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. His co-creator Tim Rice has three Academy Awards, three Tony Awards and five Grammy Awards to his name for his scores for films including Aladdin, The Lion King and 1996’s Evita, and musicals Aida and Evita. American singer, songwriter, pianist and producer John Legend also received the fourth Missing from his missing award for EGOT this year. Legend has won the most Grammy Awards, 12 in all, of the EGOT winners in the running. In addition to being the first man of color to achieve EGOT status, he is the first to win four awards in four consecutive years.
Composer Alan Menken became an EGOT legend in 2020, when he was honored with an Emmy Award for his song “Waiting in the Wings” from Tangled. Before that, he had won many awards: eight Academy Awards for Disney classics such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas and Aladdin, and 11 Grammy Awards for scores to classic Disney films. He won a Tony Award for his 2011 musical, The Tricks of the Trade. Audience favourite Jennifer Hudson stepped up to the EGOT title with a Tony win for Best Musical in 2022 for A Strange Loop, which came rather quickly, just a year after her 2021 Emmy win for Baba Yaga. Hudson also took home Oscar and Grammy wins in the years before that: the singer had a run with Dreamgirls in 2006 and won an Oscar, and two Grammy Awards in 2009 and 2017, for Jennifer Hudson and The Color Purple. Viola Davis became an EGOT winner last year when she won a Grammy Award in the Best Audiobook, Narration and Storytelling category for her memoir Finding Me. She won an Emmy for her performance in How to Get Away with Murder and an Oscar for her work in the Broadway adaptation of Fences. She also received two Tonys: one for King Hedley II and one for the 2010 Broadway adaptation of Fences. And lastly, she was joined by the aforementioned Elton John this year. Between 1987 and 2024, John won a total of nine different EGOT-related awards, including for the hugely successful “Candle in the Wind” and the Disney classic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” This makes him the nineteenth person to win all four awards.
Six other artists have received all four awards, although one was given as an honorary or similar non-competitive award, so they are not officially considered EGOT winners: Barbra Streisand needs a Tony Award, Liza Minnelli a Grammy Award, and Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones and Frank Marshall each lack an Oscar to qualify for EGOT.