Robert DeNiro and Sissy Spacek
won the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Actress Oscar, respectively,
at the 1980 awards for playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull and
Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter, both of whom were in the
audience to see the actors that played them win the award.

Mary Steenburgen also won an Oscar for playing a living person
in 1980, for Best Supporting Actress as Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard.

Actors who have won Oscars for playing living people are:
Spencer Tracy as Father Edward J. Flanigan in Boy's Town (1938)
Gary Cooper as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941)
James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)*
Joanne Woodward as Eve, based on Chris Costner Sizemore in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men (1976)
Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980)
Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
Mary Steenburgen as Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard (1980)
Haing S. Ngor as Dith Pran in The Killing Fields (1984)
Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (1995)
Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott in Shine (1996)
Julia Roberts as Erin Brokovich in Erin Brokovich (2000)
Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Jim Broadbent as John Bayley in Iris (2001).
Chris Cooper as John Laroche in Adaptation (2002)
Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006)
Christian Bale as Dickie Eklund in The Fighter (2010)
Melissa Leo as Alice Ward in The Fighter (2010)
Eddie Redmayne as Steven Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014)

*George M. Cohan died on November 5, 1942,
6 months after Yankee Doodle Dandy was released.
Ray Charles died of liver failure on June 10, 2004, three months before
Jamie Fox's Oscar-winning performance in Ray debuted at
the Toronto Film Festival. Charles was able to sit through the first
edit of the film before his death.

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