- There are hundreds of Emmy Award categories — that means there are thousands of winners.
- Plenty of musicians and non-actors have won Emmys over the years.
- Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, and Jay-Z are Emmy winners.
It's not just TV stars who can claim Emmy-winner status.
There are hundreds of Emmy categories, not just the 26 that air during the Primetime Emmy Awards, which will be held on Sunday, September 14 this year. The categories are split across multiple events throughout the year — the Primetime Emmy Awards, Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards, Daytime Emmy Awards, Sports Emmys, News & Documentary Emmys, Children's and Family Emmy Awards, and Creative Arts Emmy Awards — and many winners and nominees are known only within the industry.
But a lot of obscure categories also means that some famous people can get lost among all the gold.
While movie stars like Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt have received Emmy awards for producing prestigious television shows, musicians like Taylor Swift and Cher have won for working on other creative projects.
Here are 12 famous people you might not realize had Emmys.
Taylor Swift has an Emmy for an interactive version of her "Blank Space" music video.
The pop star won a Creative Arts Emmy in 2015 for an original interactive program: "AMEX Unstaged: Taylor Swift Experience." It was an app that offered a 360-degree view of her "Blank Space" music video integrated with a virtual reality headset.
Brad Pitt won an Emmy for bringing a classic play to television.
Pitt has long been an A-list producer with his company Plan B Entertainment, which won him an Oscar for producing "12 Years a Slave."
As a producer of Ryan Murphy's HBO adaptation of Larry Kramer's classic play, "A Normal Heart," he won the Emmy for outstanding TV movie in 2014.
He has a nomination pending this year, outstanding limited or anthology series, as he was one of the producers of Netflix's "Adolescence."
Jay-Z has won two Primetime Emmys for his work on the Super Bowl Halftime Show and one Sports Emmy.
The mogul won for outstanding variety special (live) in 2022 for the halftime show at Super Bowl LVI. He won in 2023 for directing the halftime show at Super Bowl LVII, which was the Rihanna-led show. He shares the award with Hamish Hamilton.
He won a Sports Emmy, too, in 2011 for outstanding music composition/direction/lyrics for his performance of "Run This Town," played before Super Bowl XLIV.
Tom Hanks has a bunch of Emmys for producing prestige TV shows and miniseries.
His first came in 1998, for producing "From the Earth to the Moon." He's also won for "Band of Brothers," "John Adams," "The Pacific," "Game Change," and "Olive Kitteridge."
He's only been nominated for acting on TV once, in 2017 as a guest actor in a comedy series for "Saturday Night Live."
Barack Obama has won three Emmys for narration.
Obama won the outstanding narrator award in 2022, 2023, and 2025 for narrating three Netflix docuseries, making him the first president to win a competitive Emmy.
He's not the first nominee, though — Donald Trump was nominated as a producer of "The Apprentice" twice before taking office.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver won an Emmy for his cooking show.
British chef Jamie Oliver, who is famous for his recipes and the interesting names he gives to his children, won an Emmy in 2010 in the reality show category for "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution."
Cher was nominated three times for "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" … but won an Emmy for a concert tour decades later.
She won for "Cher: The Farewell Tour" in 2003 in the category of outstanding variety, music, or comedy Special. Two of her other concert films have also been nominated for Emmys.
Zach Galifianakis has two Emmys for "Between Two Ferns."
Galifianakis' awards are both from the obscure outstanding short-format live-action entertainment program category. He won in 2014 and 2015.
Additionally, he's been nominated for his acting on "Saturday Night Live" and "Baskets."
Kenny Ortega, the director and choreographer of "High School Musical," has an award for the dance sequences.
Did you know that "High School Musical" won two Emmys in 2006? One for choreography, and one for being the best children's program.
Ortega, the longtime Disney Channel director who was also behind "Hocus Pocus," was one of the winners in the choreography category.
He had previously won two Emmys for directing and choreographing the 2002 Olympics opening ceremony.
Billy Crystal has won six Emmys, including five for writing and hosting other award ceremonies.
Surprisingly, the Emmy Awards award their competitors, like the Oscars and the Grammys. Since they're TV programs, they're awarded in the variety series categories.
Crystal was awarded for hosting the 1989 Grammys, the 1991 Academy Awards, and the 1998 Academy Awards.
He also won for writing the 1991 and 1992 Academy Award ceremonies.
Lizzo won in 2022 for producing "Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls."
Lizzo, best known for her music, is the proud co-recipient of the Emmy for outstanding reality competition program for the Prime Video series "Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls."
The competition, which Lizzo also hosted, was a competition to find backup dancers for her tour.
Although Martin Scorsese is best known for directing films, he's won three Emmys.
Scorsese's first Emmy win came in 2011 for directing the pilot of the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire." The next year, he won two more for producing and directing the HBO documentary "George Harrison: Living in the Material World."
In 2025, he was nominated for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for playing himself in the Apple TV+ series "The Studio," but lost to Bryan Cranston.
In total, he's been nominated for 13 Emmys, according to the Television Academy.
