Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

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Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the award has commonly been referred to as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. While actresses are nominated for this award by Academy members who are actors and actresses themselves, winners are selected by the entire Academy membership.

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[edit] History

Throughout the past 73 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, AMPAS has presented a total of 73 Best Supporting Actress awards to 71 different actresses. Winners of this Academy Award of Merit currently receive the familiar Oscar statuette, depicting a gold-plated knight holding a crusader's sword and standing on a reel of film. Prior to the 16th Academy Awards ceremony (1943), however, they received a plaque. The first recipient was Gale Sondergaard, who was honored at the 9th Academy Awards ceremony (1936) for her performance in Anthony Adverse. The most recent recipient was Penélope Cruz, who was honored at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony (2008) for her performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Until the 8th Academy Awards ceremony (1935), nominations for the Best Actress award were intended to include all actresses, whether the performance was in either a leading or supporting role. At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony (1936), however, the Best Supporting Actress category was specifically introduced as a distinct award following complaints that the single Best Actress category necessarily favored leading performers with the most screen time. Nonetheless, May Robson had received a Best Actress nomination (Lady for a Day, 1933) for her performance in a clear supporting role. Currently, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role constitute the four Academy Awards of Merit for acting annually presented by AMPAS.

[edit] Superlatives

Superlative Best Actress Best Supporting Actress Overall
Actress with Most Awards Katharine Hepburn 4 Shelley Winters
Dianne Wiest		 2 Katharine Hepburn 4
Actress with Most Nominations Katharine Hepburn
Meryl Streep		 12 Thelma Ritter 6 Meryl Streep 15
Actress with Most Nominations
(without ever winning)		 Deborah Kerr 6 Thelma Ritter 6 Deborah Kerr
Thelma Ritter		 6
Film with Most Nominations All About Eve
Suddenly, Last Summer
The Turning Point
Terms of Endearment
Thelma & Louise		 2 Tom Jones 3 All About Eve 4
Oldest Winner Jessica Tandy 80 Peggy Ashcroft 77 Jessica Tandy 80
Oldest Nominee Jessica Tandy 80 Gloria Stuart 87 Gloria Stuart 87
Youngest Winner Marlee Matlin 21 Tatum O'Neal 10 Tatum O'Neal 10
Youngest Nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes 13 Tatum O'Neal
Abigail Breslin
Quinn Cummings		 10 Tatum O'Neal
Abigail Breslin
Quinn Cummings		 10

The only actresses to have won the award twice are: Shelley Winters, in 1959 and 1965 (she was also nominated in 1972, in addition to receiving a nomination for lead actress in 1951); and Dianne Wiest, in 1986 and 1994 (she was also nominated in 1989).

Thelma Ritter had six nominations, more than any other actress. As she never won the award, she also holds the record for the number of unsuccessful nominations. Thelma Ritter is also the only actress with nominations in four successive years (1950-1953). Glenn Close was nominated three years consecutively (1982-1984).

Actresses with four nominations are: Ethel Barrymore, Agnes Moorehead, Lee Grant, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, and Dame Maggie Smith. All of Agnes Moorehead's and Geraldine Page's nominations were unsuccessful (but Page did win a Best Actress award); each of the others won once (with Smith also having previously won a Best Actress award).

Those with three nominations are: Anne Revere, Celeste Holm, Claire Trevor, Angela Lansbury, Shelley Winters, Glenn Close, Diane Ladd, Dianne Wiest, Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett, and Marisa Tomei. Lansbury, Close, Ladd, and McDormand have never won a Best Supporting Actress award (but McDormand did win a Best Actress award).

Hattie McDaniel was the first African American, Miyoshi Umeki the first (and only) Asian, Rita Moreno the first (and only) Puerto Rican and the first Hispanic, Brenda Fricker the first (and only) Irish, Catherine Zeta-Jones the first (and only) Welsh, Cate Blanchett the first (and only) Australian, and Penélope Cruz the first (and only) Spaniard to win Best Supporting Actress.

Only three actresses have received Best Supporting Actress nominations for non-speaking roles: Patty Duke won the award for The Miracle Worker in 1962, Samantha Morton was nominated for Sweet and Lowdown in 1999, and Rinko Kikuchi was nominated for Babel in 2006. Both Morton and Kikuchi performed their roles without speaking a word, while Duke had no dialogue whatsoever other than grunts and screams.

The earliest nominee in this category who is still alive is Olivia de Havilland (1939) followed by Jennifer Jones (1944) and Angela Lansbury (1944). The earliest winner in this category who is still alive is Celeste Holm (1947) followed by Eva Marie Saint (1954).

The only actor to win an Oscar for playing a real-life Oscar winner is Cate Blanchett. She won Best Supporting Actress in 2004 for playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator.

There have been no posthumous nominations for this award.

Only three black actresses have won the award: Hattie McDaniel, Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson.

[edit] Winners and nominees

Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by year of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the film's year of release. For example, the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress of 1999 was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees. For a list sorted by actress names, please see List of Best Supporting Actress nominees. For a list sorted by film titles, please see List of Best Supporting Actress nominees (films).

[edit] 1930s

[edit] 1940s

Beginning with the 1943 awards, winners in the supporting acting categories were awarded Oscar statuettes similar to those awarded to winners in all other categories, including the leading acting categories. Prior to this, however, winners in the supporting acting categories were awarded plaques.

[edit] 1950s

[edit] 1960s

[edit] 1970s

[edit] 1980s

[edit] 1990s

[edit] 2000s

[edit] International presence

As the Academy Awards are based in the United States and are centered on the Hollywood film industry, the majority of Academy Award winners have been Americans. Nonetheless, there is significant international presence at the awards, as evidenced by the following list of winners of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

At the 37th Academy Awards (1964), for the first time in history, all four of the top acting honors were awarded to non-Americans: Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Peter Ustinov, and Lila Kedrova. This occurred for the second time at the 80th Academy Awards (2007), when all four acting categories were similarly represented: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem, and Tilda Swinton.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1936-1940

Gale Sondergaard (1936) · Alice Brady (1937) · Fay Bainter (1938) · Hattie McDaniel (1939) · Jane Darwell (1940)
1941-1960

Mary Astor (1941) · Teresa Wright (1942) · Katina Paxinou (1943) · Ethel Barrymore (1944) · Anne Revere (1945) · Anne Baxter (1946) · Celeste Holm (1947) · Claire Trevor (1948) · Mercedes McCambridge (1949) · Josephine Hull (1950) · Kim Hunter (1951) · Gloria Grahame (1952) · Donna Reed (1953) · Eva Marie Saint (1954) · Jo Van Fleet (1955) · Dorothy Malone (1956) · Miyoshi Umeki (1957) · Wendy Hiller (1958) · Shelley Winters (1959) · Shirley Jones (1960)
1961-1980

Rita Moreno (1961) · Patty Duke (1962) · Margaret Rutherford (1963) · Lila Kedrova (1964) · Shelley Winters (1965) · Sandy Dennis (1966) · Estelle Parsons (1967) · Ruth Gordon (1968) · Goldie Hawn (1969) · Helen Hayes (1970) · Cloris Leachman (1971) · Eileen Heckart (1972) · Tatum O'Neal (1973) · Ingrid Bergman (1974) · Lee Grant (1975) · Beatrice Straight (1976) · Vanessa Redgrave (1977) · Maggie Smith (1978) · Meryl Streep (1979) · Mary Steenburgen (1980)
1981-2000

Maureen Stapleton (1981) · Jessica Lange (1982) · Linda Hunt (1983) · Peggy Ashcroft (1984) · Anjelica Huston (1985) · Dianne Weist (1986) · Olympia Dukakis (1987) · Geena Davis (1988) · Brenda Fricker (1989) · Whoopi Goldberg (1990) · Mercedes Ruehl (1991) · Marisa Tomei (1992) · Anna Paquin (1993) · Dianne Wiest (1994) · Mira Sorvino (1995) · Juliette Binoche (1996) · Kim Basinger (1997) · Judi Dench (1998) · Angelina Jolie (1999) · Marcia Gay Harden (2000)
2001-present

Jennifer Connelly (2001) · Catherine Zeta-Jones (2002) · Renee Zellweger (2003) · Cate Blanchett (2004) · Rachel Weisz (2005) · Jennifer Hudson (2006) · Tilda Swinton (2007) · Penélope Cruz (2008)
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