Tony Award / Best Actress
All actresses who have appeared in plays and musicals on Broadway in New York during the year can be nominated for the Tony Award / Best Actress . The Tony Award for best performance in a female lead in a play went to:
1947-1949
- 1947: Ingrid Bergman (in Joan of Lorraine ) and Helen Hayes (in Happy Birthday )
- 1948: Judith Anderson (in Medea ), Katharine Cornell (in Antonius and Cleopatra ) and Jessica Tandy (in Endstation Sehnsucht )
- 1949: Martita Hunt (in The Madwoman of Chaillot )
1950-1959
- 1950: Shirley Booth (in Come Back, Little Sheba )
- 1951: Uta Hagen (in The Country Girl )
- 1952: Julie Harris (in I Am a Camera )
- 1953: Shirley Booth (in Time of the Cuckoo )
- 1954: Audrey Hepburn (in Ondine )
- 1955: Nancy Kelly (in The Bad Seed )
- 1956: Julie Harris (in The Lark )
- 1957: Margaret Leighton (in Separate Tables )
- 1958: Helen Hayes (in Time Remembered )
- 1959: Gertrude Berg (in A Majority of One )
1960-1969
- 1960: Anne Bancroft (in The Miracle Worker )
- 1961: Joan Plowright (in A Taste of Honey )
- 1962: Margaret Leighton (in The Night of the Iguana )
- 1963: Uta Hagen (in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? )
- 1964: Sandy Dennis (in Any Wednesday )
- 1965: Irene Worth (in Tiny Alice )
- 1966: Rosemary Harris (in The Lion in Winter )
- 1967: Beryl Reid (in The Killing of Sister George )
- 1968: Zoe Caldwell (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie )
- 1969: Julie Harris (in Forty Carats )
1970-1979
- 1970: Tammy Grimes (in Private Lives - Revival )
- 1971: Maureen Stapleton (in The Gingerbread Lady )
- 1972: Sada Thompson (in Twigs )
- 1973: Julie Harris (in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln )
- 1974: Colleen Dewhurst (in A Moon for the Misbegotten )
- 1975: Ellen Burstyn (in Same Time, Next Year )
- 1976: Irene Worth (in Süßer Vogel Jugend )
- 1977: Julie Harris (in The Belle of Amherst )
- 1978: Jessica Tandy (in The Gin Game )
- 1979: Constance Cummings (in Wings ) and Carole Shelley (in The Elephant Man )
1980-1989
- 1980: Phyllis Frelich (in Children of a Lesser God )
- 1981: Jane Lapotaire (in Piaf )
- 1982: Zoe Caldwell (in Medea )
- 1983: Jessica Tandy (in Foxfire )
- 1984: Glenn Close (in The Real Thing )
- 1985: Stockard Channing (in Joe Egg )
- 1986: Lily Tomlin (in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe )
- 1987: Linda Lavin (in Broadway Bound )
- 1988: Joan Allen (in Burn This )
- 1989: Pauline Collins (in Shirley Valentine )
1990-1999
- 1990: Maggie Smith (in Lettice and Lovage )
- 1991: Mercedes Ruehl (in Lost in Yonkers )
- 1992: Glenn Close (in Death and the Maiden )
- 1993: Madeline Kahn (in The Sisters Rosensweig )
- 1994: Diana Rigg (in Medea )
- 1995: Cherry Jones (in The Heiress )
- 1996: Zoe Caldwell (in Master Class )
- 1997: Janet McTeer (in Nora or A Doll's House )
- 1998: Marie Mullen (in The Beauty Queen of Leenane )
- 1999: Judi Dench (in Amy's View )
2000-2009
- 2000: Jennifer Ehle (in The Real Thing )
- 2001: Mary-Louise Parker (in proof )
- 2002: Lindsay Duncan (in Private Lives )
- 2003: Vanessa Redgrave (in One Long Day's Journey into the Night )
- 2004: Phylicia Rashad (in A Raisin in the Sun )
- 2005: Cherry Jones (in Doubt )
- 2006: Cynthia Nixon (in Rabbit Hole )
- 2007: Julie White (in The Little Dog Laughed )
- 2008: Deanna Dunagan (in August: Osage County )
- 2009: Marcia Gay Harden (in The God of Carnage )
Since 2010
- 2010: Viola Davis (in Fences )
- 2011: Frances McDormand (in Good People )
- 2012: Nina Arianda (in Venus in Fur )
- 2013: Cicely Tyson (in The Trip to Bountiful )
- 2014: Audra McDonald (in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill )
- 2015: Helen Mirren (in The Audience )
- 2016: Jessica Lange (in Long Day's Journey into Night )
- 2017: Laurie Metcalf (in A Doll's House, Part 2 )
- 2018: Glenda Jackson (in Three Tall Women)