Stars Who Won Awards Posthumously: Catherine O’Hara, Chadwick Boseman

Beloved stars like Catherine O’Hara, Chadwick Boseman and Heath Ledger may be gone, but they’ll never be forgotten.

These three actors and many more have won awards posthumously following their deaths, keeping their legacies alive.

Boseman won a Critics Choice Award and a Golden Globe Award the year after his death in 2020. Ledger won his only Academy Award in 2009 after dying one year prior from an accidental overdose.

O’Hara, meanwhile, earned a SAG’s Actor Award in 2026, just one month after her death in late January.

“I was asked to assume the very sad honor of accepting this award on [Catherine] O’Hara’s behalf,” Seth Rogen, who worked with her on The Studio, said during the March 2026 awards ceremony. “I know she would have been honored to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much. She was such a big fan of all of yours.”

Scroll down to see which stars have won awards posthumously:

James Dean

Following his death in 1955 at the age of 24, James Dean received a special Golden Globe Award for East of Eden in 1956. He was honored in 1957 with the Henrietta Award at the Golden Globes for World Film Favorite — Male and in 1960 received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Rebel Without a Cause star died after a fatal car crash.

Audrey Hepburn

The Breakfast at Tiffany’s actress Audrey Hepburn received several awards after her death in January 1993 at age 63 from cancer. A 1994 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children and a 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement — Informational Programming helped her become the first posthumous EGOT winner.

Ray Charles

Ray Charles had 12 Grammys before his death in 2004 at the age of 73. One year after his passing, he won five more Grammys, bringing his total to 17.

Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. His family accepted the Best Supporting Actor statue on his behalf in February 2009 following his January 2008 death of an accidental drug overdose at age 28.

“Bittersweet is probably the best way I can describe that night. It was only a year and a month since his passing,” his father, Kim Ledger, told The Hollywood Reporter in February 2016. “We hadn’t got our heads around the tragedy of losing him, but at the same time, he was receiving such accolades for what he knew was his best work.”

The family promised the award to Heath’s now 13-year-old daughter, Matilda, whom he shared with ex-girlfriend Michelle Williams.

Amy Winehouse

Songstress Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at age 27. Already a four-time Grammy winner, she received a posthumous award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance in February 2012. Her recording of “Body and Soul” with Tony Bennett bested the category.

Joan Rivers

Comedian and style critic Joan Rivers died in 2014 after she stopped breathing while undergoing an outpatient procedure on her vocal cords and was placed into a medically induced coma. She was 81. She went on to win a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album in 2015.

David Bowie

David Bowie won four Grammys in 2017 for his album Blackstar, following his death in 2016 at the age of 69. The musician died in New York City after a battle with liver cancer.

Carrie Fisher

Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher won her first Grammy Award in January 2018 for Best Spoken Word Album. Her recording of her 2016 memoir, The Princess Diarist, was honored more than a year after her death in December 2016 from sleep apnea and other undetermined factors at age 60.

Chadwick Boseman

Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer. He was 43. The Black Panther star won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 2021 for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He also won Best Actor at the Critics Choice Awards that year. In 2022, Boseman won Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2025.

Christine McVie

Fleetwood Mac pianist Christine McVie died in November 2022 at the age of 79. She won a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals at the 2023 ceremony for her work arranging Vince Mendoza’s “Songbird (Orchestral Version).”

Her former bandmate Mick Fleetwood later organized a memorial tribute during the live CBS broadcast. Fleetwood, Sheryl Crow and Bonnie Raitt will sing a live rendition of “Songbird.”

“I think all of us are here representing Christine, what she meant as a person, in Fleetwood Mac, and of course what she meant personally to me and the band members,” Fleetwood told E! News on the red carpet in February 2023. “It’s an accolade in honor of a hugely talented, lovely, unsuspecting lady known as Christine McVie. … We’re really happy to be making a fuss out of her.”

Catherine O’Hara

Catherine O’Hara died in January 2026 at the age of 71. The cause of death was later revealed to be a pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause. She won SAG’s 2026 Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series for The Studio in March of that year, keeping her comedy legacy alive.