Most Oscar nominations for Best Film Editing

The film editor with the most Academy Award nominations is Thelma Schoonmaker (USA), who has received a total of nine Oscar nods over the course of her career. Her first nomination for Best Film Editing was in 1971 for the music documentary Woodstock and her most recent was in 2024 for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Schoonmaker is best known for a long and successful working relationship with director Martin Scorsese. They met while she was attending a short filmmaking course at New York University, and she helped rescue his short film What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) after another editor damaged the negatives.

She went on to edit Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), Scorsese's debut feature, and co-edited Woodstock with Scorsese and four others. They continued to work together from time to time during the 1970s, but because she wasn't a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, she wasn't credited for her contributions. She has worked with Scorsese on every one of his movies since Raging Bull (1980) – for which she won the Oscar for Best Film Editing.

In addition to Raging Bull, she also won Oscars for The Aviator (2005) and The Departed (2007).