Every Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress: A Complete History of the Winners (2024)

Never say Hollywood can’t give itself a note. Once the motion picture industry started handing out the Academy Awards, they noticed that moviegoers cared more about some categories than others. And so, eight ceremonies in, it dawned on someone that the Academy could double the number of awards handed out to performers if they included Academy Awards for best supporting actress and best supporting actor as well as lead actor and actress.

As we all know, these are frequently the most fun winners at the Academy Awards. But as you look through this history of the best-supporting-actress Oscar winners, you’ll also see a lot of less-than-fun recurring themes: abusive mothers, sassy grandmas, insightful domestic help, and (the favorite) suffering women of ill repute. We’ve compiled this complete list of winners, how they ranked against other best-supporting-actress nominees, and loads of facts and figures about who has won the most, who has lost the most, who was oldest to win, who was youngest to win, who won after their brother, who was directed by their father, if any supporting actress was also nominated for lead actress in the same year, and who robbed Madeline Kahn. Enjoy!

Da’Vine Joy Randolph — 2024
The Holdovers (2023)

Though this melancholy prep school picture was nominated for five Academy Awards, including one for the people’s hunk Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Oscar as best supporting actress was its only win. Randolph is rip-your-heart-out terrific as the grieving mother who runs the school cafeteria and hangs back over the holidays to help watch over both the one kid with nowhere to go (Dominic Sessa) and the haughty-but-lovable professor (Giamatti) meant to be chaperoning him. Her win over Emily Blunt in this category was one of the few losses for Oppenheimer at the 2024 ceremony.

Jamie Lee Curtis — 2023
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Winning in the category for which her mother, Janet Leigh, was only nominated (for Psycho), Jamie Lee Curtis’s Oscar for best supporting actress was part of a huge sweep for Everything Everywhere All At Once. The dimension-hopping epic won seven of its 11 nominations, including best picture, best director, best actress (Michelle Yeoh) and best supporting actor (Ke Huy Quan). Curtis’s turn as a relentless IRS auditor beat out her costar Stephanie Hsu, as well as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett, whom many predicted would take home the prize.

Ariana DeBose — 2022
West Side Story (2021)

It’s been proven by science: if you appear as Anita in a movie version of West Side Story, you will win the Academy Award for best supporting actress. The second woman to do this was Ariana DeBose, the only winner out of Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s adaptation of the beloved musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim (the film was nominated in seven categories, including best picture). Importantly, DeBose’s win this year had her making the rounds at awards shows the following year, enabling her to inform us that Angela Bassett did the thing.

Yuh-Jung Youn — 2021
Minari (2020)

The COVID-delayed 2021 Academy Awards ceremony—which was party aired from Dolby Theatre but largely tool place at Union Station—became a battle of the grandmas in the best-supporting-actress category. In one corner was Glenn Close, ultimately netting her record eighth Oscar loss (four for lead and four for supporting) for “Mamaw,” the calculator-chucking grandmother of (checks notes) JD Vance in Hillbilly Elegy. While we love Glenn Close (and her rendition of “Da Butt” at these Oscars only proved that more), it was Yuh-jung Youn who won our hearts and the best-supporting-actress trophy for her performance in the immigration tale Minari.

Laura Dern — 2020
Marriage Story (2019)

Though her father, Bruce Dern, has two Oscar nominations and her mother, Diane Ladd, has three (in this same supporting-actress category), Laura Dern was the first in the family to win one for her turn as the tough-as-nails divorce lawyer in Noah Baumbach’s brutal Marriage Story. It was her first win after previous nominations in both the lead and supporting categories; the Cult of Dern just needed a little time to really kick in. Part of her awards victory included the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles serenading her at the Indie Spirits shortly before her Oscar win, which perhaps was just as good as the statue itself.

Regina King — 2019
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Barry Jenkins’s follow-up to his best picture-winning Moonlight, an adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, got three Oscar nominations, but Regina King was the only winner. She is spectacular as a mother doing her best to keep everyone together after a false arrest threatens to tear apart a young couple in love. King’s win meant Amy Adams got her fifth loss in this category, and her sixth loss overall. King also beat out competing contenders for The Favourite, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, though Olivia Colman won that film the best-actress trophy.

Allison Janney — 2018
I, Tonya (2017)

Craig Gillespie’s exaggerated retelling of the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan saga skated its way to three Oscar nominations: best editing, best actress for Margot Robbie, and best supporting actress for Allison Janney (the film’s only winner). Janney is terrific and terrifying as the driven Olympiad’s mother. Of note: I, Tonya is not the first motion picture that features the music of ZZ Top to win an Oscar. That boast also belongs to George Miller’s Happy Feet.

Viola Davis — 2017
Fences (2016)

Viola Davis’s best-supporting-actress win for Fences got her three fourths of the way to the EGOT before the audiobook narration of her memoir Finding Me put her over the top in 2023. This nomination was Davis’s second in this category after Doubt, and she also got a best-actress nomination for The Help. Perhaps it meant more to win for the part of Rose opposite Denzel Washington, considering Davis won her Tony for playing this same character (with the same leading man) in 2010. Ten others have won Tonys and Oscars playing the same role, but there’s only one more in the supporting actress category—keep reading!

Alicia Vikander — 2016
The Danish Girl (2015)

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen The Danish Girl, in which Eddie Redmayne plays a somewhat fictionalized version of Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender women to undergo gender reassignment surgery, know that it is actually Alicia Vikander’s character who is called “the Danish girl” in dialogue. A little bit of a fake-out there! (Vikander is Swedish, too, but let’s not get into that.) Though the movie has weathered a few controversies—and Redmayne now calls starring in it a mistake—most agree Vikander comes out of all this okay, even if there were grumblings at the time that she was actually a lead, and this win was (gasp!) category fraud.

Patricia Arquette — 2015
Boyhood (2014)

Even though Richard Linklater is one of the most innovative and singular filmmakers of the last 30-plus years, his entire corpus has resulted in just one Academy Award: this extremely well-deserved triumph for Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. Like everyone else in the project, she made a 12 year commitment to Linklater, returning periodically to shoot scenes as titular boy Ellar Coltrane slowly grew up. This meant working a lot of weekends when she led the series Medium—but the effort definitely paid off.

Lupita Nyong’o — 2014
12 Years a Slave (2013)

Lupita Nyong’o became the first Mexican-born woman and first woman with Kenyan citizenship to win an Academy Award. She received the award for her devastating portrayal of Patsey, a brutalized slave whose true story is, sadly, somewhat lost to the harsh realities of American history. 12 Years a Slave also won best picture and best adapted screenplay for John Ridley, though Steve McQueen ended up losing the best-director prize to Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity.

Anne Hathaway — 2013
Les Misérables (2012)

“It came true,” Anne Hathaway said as she picked up her best supporting actress Oscar for the role of Fantine in Les Miserables. She was, one surmises, referring to her character’s showstopper “I Dreamed A Dream,” leaving out the part where Fantine dies of tuberculosis. The star later confessed that she “kind of lost [her] mind doing that movie and it hadn’t come back yet.” She still looked fabulous, though.

Octavia Spencer — 2012
The Help (2011)

Though The Help had four Oscar nominations in total, including best picture, Viola Davis for best actress, and future Oscar winner Jessica Chastain for best supporting actress, Octavia Spencer’s turn as Minny Jackson was the film’s only win. Spencer would later get two best-supporting-actress nominations in a row—for Hidden Figures and The Shape of Water—making her the first Black actress to receive two consecutive nominations after a win. In addition to beating out Chastian, Spencer won over Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids, and Bérénice Bejo in that year’s best picture-winner, The Artist.

Melissa Leo — 2011
The Fighter (2010)

Knocking out her costar Amy Adams, Melissa Leo took home the award for best supporting actress in The Fighter, mirroring costar Christian Bale, who won for best supporting actor. Leo led David O. Russell’s The Fighter was also nominated for best picture, best director, best editing and best original screenplay. Everything but best actor for Mark Wahlberg. Awww, c’mon, I’m gonna flip a table ovah or somethin’!

Mo’Nique — 2010
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire (2009)

Mo’Nique joined Cher as one of the limited mononymous Oscar winners with this win in 2010. (Somehow, Madonna, Sting, and Beyoncé have yet to win an Academy Award; Twiggy has two Golden Globes, though.) She won for her turn as the mother perpetuating a devastating cycle of abuse in Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire—the actual title of the film, which was read in full by Robin Williams when he announced the prize.

Penélope Cruz — 2009
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Playing neither Vicky (that was Rebecca Hall) nor Cristina (that was Scarlett Johansson), Cruz is the most recent, and surely the last, Oscar-winning best supporting actress from a Woody Allen picture—though Cate Blanchett’s best-actress win for Blue Jasmine was still a few years away. Allen’s films have won seven acting trophies, with another 11 nominations in total. Vicky Cristina Barcelona was the last of three movies he made with Scarlett Johansson.

Tilda Swinton — 2008
Michael Clayton (2007)

Tilda Swinton is so terrifying as the corrupt corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton that it’s possible voters were scared not to choose her! Kidding, of course, as the British actress, who gives every indication of being quite lovely in person, is outstanding as the face of pure (but self-doubting!) evil in this George Clooney–led thriller. Among those she beat this year was Cate Blanchett for I’m Not There, representing a back-to-back loss for her in the best-supporting-actress category.

Jennifer Hudson — 2007
Dreamgirls (2006)

Jennifer Hudson’s best-supporting-actress Oscar for her performance in Dreamgirls was her first step to achieving almighty EGOT status at the age of 40, still the youngest for a female entertainer. (Four men, all musicians—Robert Lopez, Benj Pasek, John Legend, and Justin Paul—got their EGOTs at 39, if you are a Gen Z or younger millennial looking to pace yourself.) Hudson was just 25 when she received the trophy for Dreamgirls, but was not the youngest competitor that year. She beat out Abigail Breslin for Little Miss Sunshine, who was just 10 years old (tied for youngest ever to be nominated).

Rachel Weisz — 2006
The Constant Gardener (2005)

This was a wild stretch of time for Rachel Weisz, who appeared in The Constant Gardener and then The Fountain. Fernando Meirelles’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel, shot on location in Kenya, was the one that earned her the Academy Award, though. Of note: A young Lupita Nyong’o, a future winner in this category, worked as a production assistant on the set of The Constant Gardener.

Cate Blanchett — 2005
The Aviator (2004)

Martin Scorsese has directed five different performances toward Oscar wins. Cate Blanchett’s turn as Katharine Hepburn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes in The Aviator is the most recent, and the only one in this category. (His films have earned a whopping 21 acting nominations in addition to those five wins.) This was a bit of a surprise victory for many, as the Golden Globe and some critics awards this year had gone to Natalie Portman for her performance in Mike Nichols’s Closer.

Renée Zellweger — 2004
Cold Mountain (2003)

The first of two Academy Awards for Renée Zellweger (she’d win best actress for Judy in 2020), Cold Mountain is a quintessential Miramax release during the prime Harvey Weinstein years. Just look at the powerhouse cast: Jude Law (nominated for best actor), Nicole Kidman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brendan Gleeson, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Donald Sutherland and Ray Winstone. This Anthony Minghella–directed film, which is set during the Civil War, also managed to be a box office success—an unlikely fate for a project like this today.

Catherine Zeta-Jones — 2003
Chicago (2002)

Fact: If you wear fishnets, dance alluringly, and repeat the word “Cicero” under a cool blue lighting scheme, you too will win the Academy Award for best supporting actress. (Please try this out and upload the results.) Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was somehow not nominated in this category two years prior for Traffic, was part of Chicago’s big win of six Oscars (including best picture) but the only performer from the cast to get an award. She beat her costar Queen Latifah in this category, and also Julianne Moore in The Hours, Moore’s fourth loss in a row. (Don’t worry: She’d win best actress for Still Alice 12 years later.)

Jennifer Connelly — 2002
A Beautiful Mind (2001)

A Beautiful Mind, a movie about a guy using math to figure out how to pick up girls (seriously), won four Oscars, including best picture, best adapted screenplay, best director for Ron Howard, and best supporting actress for Jennifer Connelly. How much of this movie’s Oscar success was actually a make-good for Howard’s far superior Apollo 13 (which is about using math to achieve greatness) only winning tech awards is something you’d need a Nobel Prize to figure out. All five supporting-actress nominees this year (including Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Marisa Tomei, and Kate Winslet) either already were or would eventually become Oscar winners.

Marcia Gay Harden — 2001
Pollock (2000)

Everything Jackson Pollock did, Lee Krasner did backwards and in heels! Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but most art historians would agree that Krasner (Pollock’s long-suffering wife) was a major innovator in her own right, and an inspiration to the great abstract painter, played by Ed Harris (who also directed this biographical film). Marcial Gay Harden beat out Judi Dench, one of her seven Oscar losses—but she’d already won in this category for Shakespeare in Love.

Angelina Jolie — 2000
Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Some years, there’s a clear winner. Other years, you look at the nominees and think, “Wow, this should be a five-way tie.” Angelina Jolie is, of course, spectacular in the psych ward drama Girl, Interrupted, a film that rightly shot her to the A-list. But the other nominees this year? Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense, Catherine Keener in Being John Malkovich, Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown, and Chloë Sevigny in Boys Don’t Cry. Legendary turns all!

Judi Dench — 1999
Shakespeare in Love (1998)

There were some that grumbled at the time that Judi Dench’s performance as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love was really more of a cameo. She’s only on screen for about 10 minutes, and has something like 450 words of dialogue. (This is not the “smallest” supporting role in this category, though—read on!) Still, it’s hard to imagine this movie without Dench swooping in as she does. Furthermore, think about a scenario in which the last 25-plus years of Dench don’t come with the heft of this glorious role and its resultant trophy. All’s well that ends well, if I can quote some guy.

Kim Basinger — 1998
L.A. Confidential (1997)

A perfect role for a perfect performer in one of the great films of the 1990s, Kim Basinger’s best-supporting-actress win for L.A. Confidential is one of those things in life that gives you faith in voting bodies. True, it may have been nice for Gloria Stuart—who was 87 at the time and is still the oldest-ever nominee in the best-supporting-actress category—to have won for Titanic, but you can’t have everything. It’s also worth watching the video of Basinger’s win again. You’ll notice that after Cuba Gooding Jr. reads her name, she reacts with poise and stands up, with the camera following. But it seems like Alec Baldwin (her husband at the time) keeps her from standing up too quickly, ensuring that the camera captures his reaction to her win.

Juliette Binoche — 1997
The English Patient (1996)

Nothing against Juliette Binoche—who is wonderful—and nothing against The English Patient, which is fine in a 1990s Miramax kind of way. But we all witnessed a gross injustice when Lauren Bacall was denied her Academy Award for Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces. And Binoche knew it too. “I didn’t prepare anything. I thought Lauren was going to get it, and I think she deserves it,” Binoche said from the stage. Luckily, the Academy corrected things somewhat and gave Bacall an honorary award in 2010.

Mira Sorvino — 1996
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

Currently, Mira Sorvino is the only person to have won the Academy Award for a film in which she presents Woody Allen with a clock of fornicating pigs. Her role as the lovable dingbat Linda Ash in Mighty Aphrodite is a comedy sensation, but her win at the Oscars ranks as one of the greatest acceptance speeches of all time, as the camera kept cutting to her proud papa, Paul Sorvino, blubbering like a baby as she held her trophy. (Her then boyfriend, Quentin Tarantino, seemed very happy too.)

Dianne Wiest — 1995
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

“Don’t speak!” Dianne Wiest is unstoppable as the actress Helen Sinclair, one of the all-time great “diva” roles in Woody Allen’s zany gangland comedy Bullets Over Broadway. (This was one of the few Allen films in which he had a cowriter; in this case, it was the humor columnist, playwright, director, and actor Doug McGrath.) With this win, Wiest became just the second woman to win two best-supporting-actress Academy Awards, tying Shelley Winters for the honor.

Anna Paquin — 1994
The Piano (1993)

Just 11 years old when she won (but still not the youngest winner in this category!), Anna Paquin bolted out of her seat in a fetchingpurple hat when Gene Hackman read her name at the Oscar ceremony. Adorable! Then she stood behind the podium in a state of shock, half-giggling, half-hyperventilating. It’s a great moment! Then a little Hollywood kicked in and she started thanking people. If you can believe it, Jane Campion was only the second woman ever to be nominated in the best-director category.

Marisa Tomei — 1993
My Cousin Vinny (1992)

A great performance, a great film, a great and righteous win. We’re saying that because, back in the day, there were some who felt Marisa Tomei’s comedic turn in the admittedly light My Cousin Vinny was some kind of blight on the Oscars. It even spun into a conspiracy theory that the announcement of her name was some kind of accident. Tomei was also a former soaps and sitcom star up against three heavyweight Brits (Joan Plowright, Vanessa Redgrave, and Miranda Richardson), as well as Australian Judy Davis in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives. But time has washed all that away—and Tomei has had two more nominations since.

Mercedes Ruehl — 1992
The Fisher King (1991)

Mercedes Ruehl is probably a bigger name to Broadway aficionados than movie lovers, but her turn in Terry Gilliam’s outstanding fantasy-drama The Fisher King was absolutely the right choice for the best-supporting-actress prize this year. She is marvelous as the hard-working video store owner who helps get Jeff Bridges back on his feet after he abandons his career as a talk radio host who inadvertently inspires a killing spree. (Today, someone like that would just say, “Hit like and subscribe!”)

Whoopi Goldberg — 1991
Ghost (1990)

The second Black woman to win in this category (after a 51-year gap), Whoopi Goldberg, who would later host the Oscars four times, was hilarious and touching in the part of the medium Oda Mae Brown in the blockbuster sensation Ghost. As it happened, she was handed her Oscar by Denzel Washington, who had become the second Black man to win the best-supporting-actor prize the year before. Whoopi’s win also added her name to the list of Star Trek alumni who have won an Oscar.

Brenda Fricker — 1990
My Left Foot (1989)

Somehow, Brenda Fricker is the only Irish woman to win an Oscar for either supporting or lead actress. This doesn’t seem right, considering Irish contributions to film arts, but it’s the truth. (There have been wins for Irish women in other Oscar categories, so that’s something, until Saoirse Ronan eventually wins one for acting—she’s got four nominations already.) Accepting her award for My Left Foot (which also got Daniel Day-Lewis his first of three trophies), she thanked the real “Mrs. Brown” and said that “anybody who gives birth 22 times deserves one of these.”

Geena Davis — 1989
The Accidental Tourist (1988)

Perhaps a bit of an upset over Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl (her third nomination and third loss), Geena Davis won the best-supporting-actress prize for her role as the zany dog trainer who teaches William Hurt how to embrace life after tragedy in Lawrence Kasdan’s terrific comic drama. Oscar producers were probably rooting for Weaver, too, as her costar Melanie Griffith (and then husband Don Johnson) were the presenters for this category.

Olympia Dukakis — 1988
Moonstruck (1987)

This was one of three wins for Moonstruck, which also received a best-actress trophy for Cher and best original screenplay for John Patrick Shanley. (Alas, Vincent Gardenia had tough competition for best supporting actor opposite Sean Connery in The Untouchables. Olympia Dukakis was the obvious best-supporting-actress winner as Rose, head of the Castorini family in one of the all-time great romantic comedies. She concluded her acceptance speech by adding, “Okay, Michael, let’s go!”—a reference to her cousin Michael Dukakis, who was running for president at the time (and would lose by a considerable margin).

Dianne Wiest — 1987
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

She may not have deserved Cole Porter, but she deserved this Oscar win. This was Dianne Wiest’s first of two best-supporting-actress Oscars, both of which came from appearing in Woody Allen films. Hannah and Her Sisters is such a sweeping view of New York City characters that she barely shares any screen time with her costar Michael Caine, who also won a best-supporting-actor award for this film. (Allen won best original screenplay, too, and was nominated for best director while the film was nominated for best picture.)

Anjelica Huston — 1986
Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

With this award, Anjelica Huston became the only person to win an Oscar in a film directed by their parent, in this case John Huston. (Nearly 40 years earlier, John Huston directed his father, Walter Huston, to an Oscar in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Not sure if this double record will ever be broken!) Prizzi’s Honor, an ahead-of-its-time mafia comedy, costarred Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner and has one of the most shocking endings in the history of movies.

Peggy Ashcroft — 1985
A Passage to India (1984)

“Mrs. Mooooooooore!” Sir David Lean’s final film was nominated for 11 Oscars, including best picture, but won only two: best score for Maurice Jarre (his third after Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, all Lean films) and best supporting actress for Dame Peggy Ashcroft, who was 77 at the time of her win, making her the oldest winner in this category. Based on E.M. Forster’s novel, costarring Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, James Fox, Alec Guinness, Roshan Seth, and others, the film is either progressive for its time or a reactionary ode to the days of the British Raj, depending on your point of view. All can agree, though, that Peggy Ashcroft’s performance as the kind British lady who prefers to travel in comfort is terrific.

Linda Hunt — 1984
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

An unusual award in the sense that Linda Hunt (a white woman from New Jersey) plays the part of Billy Kwan, a Chinese Australian man. This would likely not fly today, but 40 years ago it was seen as a brave—and even noble—casting choice. The film is beyond canceled, despite being a stern look at Indonesia’s attempted military coup and democratic struggles during the late 1960s.

Jessica Lange — 1983
Tootsie (1982)

This was one wild night for Jessica Lange at the Oscars. She won best supporting actress over her costar Teri Garr from Tootsie (tough choice!), but also over her costar Kim Stanley in the Frances Farmer biopic Frances. For a brief moment, it looked like Lange might be a double-winner, as she was nominated for best actress for Frances too—but that prize went to Meryl Streep for Sophie’s Choice. Anyhow, despite Tootsie’s 10 nominations (including best picture), this was its only win. That it lost best original screenplay to Gandhi (a terrific movie, sure) is a bit of a scandal.

Maureen Stapleton — 1982
Reds (1981)

A three-hour-plus movie about internecine squabbles between leftists sounds like more of an obligatory chore than a good time, but Warren Beatty’s exhilarating and juicy Reds is absolutely terrific. Part of that is due to Maureen Stapleton’s performance as the community’s den mother (inasmuch as anarchists can have den mothers) Emma Goldman. She had been nominated three times previously (first in 1958, for Lonelyhearts), and when she accepted her award, she said she was “thrilled, happy, delighted,” paused to add “sober,” then said she wanted to thank “everyone she ever met in her entire life.”

Mary Steenburgen — 1981
Melvin and Howard (1980)

Jonathan Demme’s breezy tall tale about Melvin Dummar, a drifter, gas station employee, game show contestant, and American dreamer who claimed that Howard Hughes bequeathed him his fortune, is one of the great movies of this era that doesn’t get enough attention. This shaggy indie included a juicy part for Mary Steenburgen as the put-upon wife trying to keep a family together in the face of a doofus husband.

Meryl Streep — 1980
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

The late 1970s were such a whirlwind for women’s liberation that Hollywood went out and made one of the first examinations of divorce, and it featured the wife and mother as an uncaring monster. Wait, what? That head-scratcher aside, Kramer vs. Kramer wasn’t just the top box office draw that year. (Imagine Marriage Story making more money than Avengers: Endgame in 2019! Lol! LMAO, even!) It also won best picture, best director (Robert Benton), best actor (Dustin Hoffman), and best adapted screenplay. This was Streep’s first Oscar (now she has three) and second nomination (after The Deer Hunter the year before).

Maggie Smith — 1979
California Suite (1978)

Scroll back up for a moment, and what do you notice? How about that? The 1979 Oscars initiated a four-year run in which the best-supporting-actress award went to someone with the initials M.S. Considering the rise in “women’s lib” and the introduction of the honorific Ms., this is, c’mon, a little cool! Anyway: Smith (who beat both Stapleton for Woody Allen’s Interiors and Streep for best-picture winner The Deer Hunter, as well as Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait and Penelope Milford in Coming Home) is a hoot as a British actress up for an Oscar (meta!) in Herbert Ross’s adaptation of Neil Simon’s wacky California Suite, a West Coast iteration of the popular Plaza Suite.

Vanessa Redgrave — 1978
Julia (1977)

Controversy! Because Vanessa Redgrave was nominated for supporting actress in a movie called Julia, for playing the role of Julia? No, it’s not exactly category fraud; Jane Fonda as Lillian Hellman was actually the lead in this film, despite the title. The controversy came because both Jewish Defense League demonstrators and Palestinian counterprotesters were stationed outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that night. Redgrave was a political hot potato because of her involvement in a recent documentary, The Palestinian, which was seen as sympathetic to the Palestine Liberation Organization. During her acceptance speech, she referenced “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.” Later in the ceremony, three-time Oscar-winning screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky rebuked Redgrave, saying, “A simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.”

Beatrice Straight — 1977
Network (1976)

Beatrice Straight’s best-supporting-actress performance in Network has the unusual distinction of being the shortest in the category’s history, at just under eight minutes of screen time and approximately 260 spoken words. That’s not a lot! But there are, as they say, no small roles. Network also won Faye Dunaway the best-actress award and Peter Finch best actor, making him the first posthumous acting winner prior to Heath Ledger.

Lee Grant — 1976
Shampoo (1975)

The sexual revolution romp Shampoo, in which a main character makes a blunt reference to a specific act of intimacy that was considered such a shocker for its time that John Updike devoted a whole rumination to it in his novel Rabbit Is Rich, is one of the most 1970s movies ever made. (Odd, because it is very much set in 1968, but that’s how things go.) Lee Grant is terrific as one of Warren Beatty’s conquests. He plays a bed-hopping hair stylist who will slowly realize that hedonism may look good on camera, but eventually leaves you feeling hollow.

Ingrid Bergman — 1975
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses of all time, but by the time Sidney Lumet’s spin on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express came around, she already had two Oscars—one for Gaslight, the other for Anastasia. She’s terrific as part of an all-star cast that included Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, and Albert Finney’s Poirot. But more memorable than Madeline Kahn as Lily von Shtüpp in Blazing Saddles??! Oh, Academy, you missed the mark here.

Tatum O’Neal — 1974
Paper Moon (1973)

At age 10, Tatum O’Neal remains the youngest Academy Award winner of all time. And if you rewatch Peter Bogdanovich’s comedy masterpiece Paper Moon, you’ll see this wasn’t a stunt award, as she gave a real, honest-to-Pete performance. (The fact that she was playing against her own father, Ryan O’Neal, probably helped her comfort level.) It was a battle of the youngsters this year, as O’Neal beat out 15-year-old Linda Blair, nominated for The Exorcist. Laughs over barf any day!

Eileen Heckart — 1973
Butterflies Are Free (1972)

Despite the falsehood derived from the title (butterflies are decidedly not free, they are actually kind of expensive), Eileen Heckart won the best-supporting-actress prize for the film adaptation of Leonard Gershe’s play. She plays the concerned mother of a young blind man, worried that he’s about to get his heart stomped on by Goldie Hawn in hippie San Francisco. Who could ever suspect Goldie Hawn of anything negative?

Cloris Leachman — 1972
The Last Picture Show (1971)

Tough call, but the right call. Cloris Leachman won the best-supporting-actress Oscar over her Last Picture Show costar Ellen Burstyn, but Cybill Shepherd and Eileen Brennan could just as easily have been nominated too. The movie is a masterpiece because everything clicks (including the cinematography), but Leachman, known mostly for goofin’ it up with Mel Brooks and Mary Tyler Moore, is outstanding as the lonely housewife who begins an affair with a high-school-aged Timothy Bottoms.

Helen Hayes — 1971
Airport (1970)

Airport? Like, the disaster movie? An Oscar winner? Yes, it’s true, but do not judge Airport by its three sequels (including one where a plane and its passengers get stuck underwater for some reason) or the many all-star disaster pictures that sprang up after its success. The original Airport, based on Arthur Hailey’s novel, is a terrific film all about the toil and tumult that goes into running an airport. It is surprisingly fascinating, perhaps anticipating many a reality TV show. It got 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture, and it deserved them all. Hayes, the second-ever EGOT winner after Richard Rodgers, and the “first lady of the American theater,” is hilarious as the devilish old lady thief and stowaway.

Goldie Hawn — 1970
Cactus Flower (1969)

Early 20s Goldie Hawn falling in love with frumpy 50-something Walter Matthau? Hollywood, never change. This extremely 1960s farce, written by Billy Wilder’s partner I.A.L. Diamond and directed by serial Neil Simon adapter Gene Saks (Bea Arthur’s husband at the time), is certainly a time capsule. If you watch it in the right frame of mind, you might even be charmed. Anyway, Goldie Hawn put in many classic performances over the years after this, but this is the one that won her the Oscar.

Ruth Gordon — 1968
Rosemary’s Baby (1967)

Whenever you fear you may lose faith in all voting bodies, calm yourself by remembering that the Academy gave Ruth Gordon the Oscar for Rosemary’s Baby. Sometimes people can get it right. Her turn as the quintessential nosy New York neighbor/devil worshiper was actually her fifth nomination. One of these was also for best supporting actress (Inside Daisy Clover), but the other three were for cowriting the original screenplays to three classic George Cukor films: A Double Life, Adam’s Rib, and Pat and Mike.

Estelle Parsons — 1968
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, one of the true before-and-after milestones in Hollywood in terms of attitude, violence, shooting style, design, and performances, was nominated for 10 Oscars (including best picture, best actor for Warren Beatty, best actress for Faye Dunaway, and best supporting actor for both Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard). The bank robbin’, gun totin’ hit only won two awards—best cinematography and best supporting actress for Estelle Parsons as the screeching, manic Blanche Barrow.

Sandy Dennis — 1967
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Mike Nichols’s first feature film is essentially a double two-hander, and everyone got a nomination: Richard Burton and George Segal for best actor and best supporting actor, and Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis for best actress and best supporting actress. Both men went home empty-handed, and both women won. Was this some kind of karma for enduring the screaming matches in Edward Albee’s drama? Perhaps. Cool Sandy Dennis facts: Though she never married, she lived with legendary jazz giant Gerry Mulligan for many years, then later was involved with Eric Roberts, 20 years her junior. She also rescued stray cats in New York City.

Shelley Winters — 1966
A Patch of Blue (1965)

Love is literally blind in this Civil Rights Era movie about an interracial romance. Sidney Poitier falls in love with Elizabeth Hartman, much to the chagrin of her coarse and abusive mother, played by Shelley Winters. This was Winters’s second Oscar in this category, making her the only performer to win twice until Dianne Wiest did the same decades later. While the film is a little dated, it isn’t naive, and ends on an only slightly hopeful note.

Lila Kedrova — 1965
Zorba the Greek (1964)

Anthony Quinn was Mexican and played Zorba in Zorba the Greek. So it’s only fitting that Lila Kedrova, who was Russian, should play the French Madame Hortense in this loud, life-affirming romp that involves dancing on the sand and smashing dinnerware. Twenty years after winning the best-supporting-actress Oscar, Kedrova won a Tony for playing the same character in the musical adaptation, simply called Zorba—the only performer to make the transition from screen to stage and win both prizes.

Margaret Rutherford — 1964
The V.I.P.s (1963)

Three actresses from the best-picture and best-director winner Tom Jones—Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman—canceled each other out in the best-supporting-actress category, leaving just Lilia Skala from Lilies in the Field against Margaret Rutherford in The V.I.P.s. Voters chose Rutherford from the all-star cast (which included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Orson Welles, and many others) engaged in little dramas while stuck in a Heathrow Airport departure lounge.

Patty Duke — 1963
The Miracle Worker (1962)

Patty Duke remains the only performer to win the best-supporting-actress award for what is essentially a non-speaking role. Though she certainly snorts and caterwauls a lot as Helen Keller on the receiving end of tough-love education from Anne Bancroft, before the big climax where she finally says “water.” A Gen Z trend not long ago posited that the story of Helen Keller couldn’t be true, so it’s worth watching this so you are armed with some knowledge if that comes around again.

Rita Moreno — 1962
West Side Story (1961)

Though Betty Wand dubbed her voice during “A Boy Like That,” Rita Moreno is still the fiery flame of West Side Story as Anita: Maria’s confidante, Bernardo’s girlfriend, and lead performer in “America,” a number that truly revolutionized American musical theater. Moreno would, of course, appear in West Side Story again 40 years later, as an inspired spin on the character Doc. Moreno’s win was just one of 10 for West Side Story in 1961, including best picture.

Shirley Jones — 1961
Elmer Gantry (1960)

Shirley Jones’s win was one of three for this portrait of a huckster bible salesman, including best actor for Burt Lancaster and best adapted screenplay for Richard Brooks. The all-American gal next door from musicals like Carousel and The Music Man was cast against type as a “woman of ill repute” in this risqué-for-its-time film. As we continue back in time on this list, you’ll see that she was not the only performer to win the Academy over with this move.

Shelley Winters — 1960
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)

Though this is very much a Hollywood production from the late 1950s, The Diary of Anne Frank is still a remarkable document from a time in which the specifics of the Holocaust were still unknown to many people. While the film was nominated for eight awards, including best picture, Winters’s supporting-actress award made her one of only three winners, including art direction and cinematography (those categories were both split at the time between color films and black-and-white films).

Wendy Hiller — 1959
Separate Tables (1958)

Like The V.I.P.s, this hotel-set collection of stories was derived from the work of playwright Terence Rattigan, and it also won a highly regarded British stage performer a best-supporting-actress award. David Niven also won the best-actor prize for the part of the extremely English Major David Angus Pollock, who’s trying to avoid getting canceled (the more things change). Wendy Hiller is the pearl-clutching hotel manager in this serious character study.

Miyoshi Umeki — 1958
Sayonara (1957)

Japanese American Myoshi Umeka was the first woman of Asian descent to win an Academy Award in this successful drama based on a James A. Michener novel. Umeki’s Katsumi falls in love with Red Buttons’s Airman Joe Kelley, who is based in Japan during the Korean war. Their romance causes a hubbub on the base, creating ripple effects for Marlon Brando’s Ace Gruver.

Dorothy Malone — 1957
Written on the Wind (1956)

This Douglas Sirk melodrama stars Rock Hudson as the drunken heir to an oil baron who falls in love with Lauren Bacall, the one woman not impressed with him. Meanwhile his trainwreck sister, played by Dorothy Malone, is obsessed with Robert Stack, but he’s secretly in love with Bacall. Get out some paper—it gets even more complicated.

Jo Van Fleet — 1956
East of Eden (1955)

Never forget that John Steinbeck’s epic novel (and Elia Kazan’s film adaptation) have, as their instigating event, wilted lettuce. Oh, if only Clarence Birdseye had been around! Anyway, though James Dean was nominated for a posthumous best-actor award, it was Jo Van Fleet as the mother who abandoned the family to live on the bad side of town and run a house of ill repute who won. Incidentally, in the film, the discovery of the long-lost mother’s new profession does not go over well.

Eva Marie Saint — 1955
On The Waterfront (1954)

Elia Kazan’s crime drama, which many have interpreted as a rebuke against those who criticized the director for speaking before the House Un-American Activities Committee, was an awards bonanza, winning eight out of their 12 nominations (including best picture, best director, best screenplay for Budd Schulberg, and best actor for Marlon Brando). Eva Marie Saint, still with us at age 100 as we write this, had acted exclusively on stage and television beforehand, making this her film debut.

Donna Reed — 1954
From Here to Eternity (1953)

While it was Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr who got hot and heavy in the sand, the supporting performers were the ones who won the Oscars. Best supporting actor went to Frank Sinatra, and best supporting actress went to Donna Reed. Reed was best known for heartwarming pictures like It’s A Wonderful Life, and she’d later star in the all-American apple pie series The Donna Reed Show. But here she went against type and took home the trophy for a role as a “hostess” in a “sporting house” close to the Pearl Harbor military base.

Gloria Grahame — 1953
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Coming off her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in In A Lonely Place, Grahame is spectacular in Vincente Minnelli’s examination of the seedy side of showbiz, costarring Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas. Grahame’s win here represented another loss for Thelma Ritter, who would ultimately be nominated six times in this category and never win. Glenn Close has her beat at eight nods, and Amy Adams ties her at six, but those are spread between the supporting and lead categories, and both of them still have a chance to win. So Ritter has this peculiar corner of Oscar-record-making locked. Peter O’Toole, Deborah Kerr, and Richard Burton respectively had eight, seven, and six losses, but they all got honorary awards—which will likely happen for Close and Adams if they don’t win something, right? Ritter, however, remains forever dissed.

Kim Hunter — 1952
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

“Hey, Stellllllaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Josephine Hull — 1951
Harvey (1950)

Josephine Hull starred in several classic stage productions, including You Can’t Take it With You, Arsenic and Old Lace, and, later, Harvey, the zany tale of a man and his invisible rabbit pal. When the latter transferred to film, she came along with it and won the Academy Award for best supporting actress, starring opposite James Stewart.

Mercedes McCambridge — 1950
All The King’s Men (1949)

This political drama—loosely based on the story of Louisiana governor Huey P. Long—won best picture, best actor for Broderick Crawford, and best supporting actress for Mercedes McCambridge in what was her first film role after a career in TV and especially radio. (She was an original cast member on Guiding Light before it transitioned to television.) Those vocal skills came in handy decades later in a role she might be best known for: voicing the demon inside little Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Claire Trevor — 1949
Key Largo (1948)

John Huston’s bare-knuckle crime drama—set at a Florida hotel during a hurricane—is a showcase for tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, as well as dames like Lauren Bacall and Claire Trevor. Trevor’s best-supporting-actress winning turn as the aging former nightclub singer was a triumph, as her career was beginning to slow down after pumping out five or six pictures a year in the 1930s. Never forget that she was the top-billed star in Stagecoach, ahead of John Wayne.

Celeste Holm — 1948
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Elia Kazan’s social drama, in which Gregory Peck’s investigative journalist pretends to be Jewish to expose antisemitism, won best picture, best director, and best supporting actress for Celeste Holm, a fashion editor at Peck’s magazine. Holm would be nominated twice more in this category, in Come to the Stable and All About Eve.

Anne Baxter — 1947
The Razor’s Edge (1946)

The first of two adaptations of W. Somerset Maugham’s big fat philosophical tale of a traumatized World War I pilot starred Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, and was nominated for best picture. (The one starring Bill Murray in 1984 did not fare as well.) Anne Baxter’s supporting role begins the tale as a socialite, but ends up an alcoholic and opium addict.

Anne Revere — 1946
National Velvet (1944)

The kid classic starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and a horse won Anne Revere the Academy Award for best supporting actress for the role of Taylor’s mother, Miss Araminty Brown. (What a name!) She was nominated in the same category two years before for The Song of Bernadette, in which she played Jennifer Jones’s mother.

Ethel Barrymore — 1945
None but the Lonely Heart (1944)

In 1945, Ethel Barrymore joined her brother Lionel Barrymore in the Oscars club, leaving their other brother, John Barrymore, forever dissed (even if his film Grand Hotel won best picture). None but the Lonely Heart, written and directed by Clifford Odets, is a British family drama in which Ethel’s “Ma” spars with her son Cary Grant’s wandering spirit.

Katina Paxinou — 1944
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Anyone who has read Ernest Hemingway’s book knows you can’t really adapt it—but much like the Spanish Republicans, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, and director Sam Wood gave it their all. Katina Paxinou, making her screen debut, won the best-supporting-actress award for the part of the tough-as-nails guerilla fighter Pilar. Until Unforgiven, this was the only Oscar-winning film that shared a name with a Metallica song.

Teresa Wright — 1943
Mrs. Miniver (1942)

This wartime drama about the British homefront was a box office sensation that cleaned up at the Oscars, winning best picture, best director for William Wyler, best actress for Greer Garson, best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, and best supporting actress for Teresa Wright, whose character marries into the Miniver family as they experience the tumult of WWII.

Mary Astor — 1942
The Great Lie (1941)

The Great Lie is a big fat melodrama involving annulled marriages, disappearances, and Tchaikovsky. Mary Astor plays a concert pianist caught up in a cockamamie love triangle (or maybe it’s a trapezoid) involving Bette Davis and George Brent. Even though Astor was an accomplished piano player, her playing was dubbed. Twenty-three years later, Bette Davis and Mary Astor would costar in another film, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, for which Agnes Moorehead received a best-supporting-actress nomination.

Jane Darwell — 1941
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Oy, you shouldn’t know from the dust bowl! No food, no work, and a giant family packed into one junky truck, slowly inching toward California—where, allegedly, the money (or at least the fruit) grows on trees. It doesn’t go quite as planned for the Joad family in John Ford’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, but Jane Darwell does her best to keep the family together as Ma Joad, and won the best-supporting-actress Oscar as a result.

Hattie McDaniel — 1940
Gone with the Wind (1939)

This is complicated. On the one hand, it is exemplary that the Academy recognized a Black woman over four white contemporaries back in 1940—a full 51 years before Whoopi Goldberg would win in this category. It is, however, unfortunate that it is for the role of Mammy in the beyond-problematic “Lost Cause” epic Gone with the Wind. It is criminal that McDaniel was forced to sit at a segregated table away from her colleagues and costars on the far side of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel, which normally did not allow entry to Black people. McDaniel is said to have summed up her time in Hollywood philosophically, with the famous quote, “I’d rather play a maid than be one.”

Fay Bainter — 1939
Jezebel (1938)

An early Bette Davis drama costarring Henry Fonda, this is a not-particularly-progressive film that seems to suggest that a woman should not even think for a minute about having it all. That doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable watch, with fancy Southern balls, leper colonies, and Fay Bainter’s Oscar-winning supporting role as Aunt Belle. Bainter was also nominated this year for best actress in White Banners, but lost to (aha!) Bette Davis for Jezebel.

Alice Brady — 1938
In Old Chicago (1938)

Alice Brady stars as Molly O’Leary in a movie called In Old Chicago. Sounds nice, right? A rich Irish comedy about an immigrant family, maybe? Well, let’s think for a minute. What happened in old Chicago? Hmm, there was a bad fire. And what started that fire? A cow. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow!!! Oh my God, the Mrs. O’Leary of “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow” fame won an Academy Award? The cow owner that burned down Chicago?! Firing up the TCM app immediately!

Gale Sondergaard — 1937
Anthony Adverse (1936)

The first best supporting actress Oscar in history went to stage actress Gale Sondergaard, making her film debut as Faith Paleologus in Mervyn LeRoy’s Anthony Adverse. That may just sound like a bunch of crazy syllables, but this is a stylish, globe-trotting picture starring Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland, and Rollo Lloyd as Napoleon. Sondergaard’s Paleologus is a conspiratorial housekeeper, proving that, throughout the centuries, good help has been hard to find.

Has anyone won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress?

Yes. Meryl Streep and Ingrid Bergman both have two best actress awards and one best supporting actress award, while Cate Blanchett, Jessica Lange, Maggie Smith, Renée Zellweger, and Helen Hayes have each won best actress once and best supporting actress once.

Who has the most Oscars?

Walt Disney has the most Oscars of any individual, with 26 trophies to his name (22 competitive Oscars 4 honorary awards), while Katharine Hepburn is the most decorated performer in the history of the Oscars (she won best actress four times). The most decorated supporting actresses in Oscar history are Shelley Winters and Dianne Wiest, the only actresses to win in that category twice.

Who is the youngest person to win the Oscar for best supporting actress?

It’s still Tatum O’Neal, who was 10 years old when she won best supporting actress for her role in Paper Moon—making her not only the youngest best supporting actress, but the youngest Oscar winner of all time.

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