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 Academy membership as a whole.

History[link]

Throughout the past 76 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, AMPAS has presented a total of 76 Best Supporting Actress awards to 74 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 Octavia Spencer, who was honored at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony (2012) for her performance in The Help.

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.^{[citation needed]} Under the system currently in place, an actress is nominated for a specific performance in a single film, and such nominations are limited to five per year. 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.

Winners and nominees[link]

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).

1930s[link]

1940s[link]

1950s[link]

1960s[link]

1970s[link]

1980s[link]

1990s[link]

2000s[link]

2010s[link]

Superlatives[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2012)

For the past four Academy Award ceremonies, this category has featured two nominees from the same picture: Doubt (2008), Up in the Air (2009), The Fighter (2010) and The Help (2011). Amy Adams was nominated for both Doubt and The Fighter.

Five women have won both the Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress awards: Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep, and Jessica Lange.

The only actresses to have won the Best Supporting Actress award twice are Shelley Winters and Dianne Wiest. Winters won in 1959 and 1965 (she was also nominated in 1972, in addition to being nominated in the Best Actress category in 1951); Wiest won in 1986 and 1994 (she was also nominated in 1989).

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

Actresses with four nominations in this category are Ethel Barrymore, Agnes Moorehead, Lee Grant, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, and Maggie Smith. All of Moorehead's and Page's nominations were unsuccessful (but Page did win a Best Actress award, in 1986); each of the others have won (with Smith also having previously won a Best Actress award, in 1970).

Those with three nominations are in this category Amy Adams, Anne Revere, Celeste Holm, Claire Trevor, Angela Lansbury, Shelley Winters, Glenn Close, Diane Ladd, Dianne Wiest, Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett, Marisa Tomei, and Gladys Cooper. Lansbury, Close, Ladd, Cooper, Adams and McDormand have never won a Best Supporting Actress award (but McDormand did win a Best Actress award, in 1997).

Hattie McDaniel was the first black winner, Miyoshi Umeki the first Asian winner, and Rita Moreno the first Hispanic winner.

Five black actresses have won the award, all African American: Hattie McDaniel, Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson, Mo'Nique, and most recently Octavia Spencer.

Hispanic actresses who have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress are: Mexican actress Katy Jurado (1954), Mexican-American actress Susan Kohner (1959), Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno (1961, West Side Story), Argentine actress Norma Aleandro (1988), Puerto Rican-American actress Rosie Perez (1993), Mexican actress Adriana Barraza (2006), Spanish actress Penélope Cruz (2008, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), and Argentine actress Bérénice Bejo (2011).

Brenda Fricker was the first (and only) Irish winner, Anna Paquin the first New Zealander winner, Juliette Binoche the first (and only) French winner, Catherine Zeta-Jones the first (and only) Welsh winner, Cate Blanchett the first (and only) Australian winner, Penélope Cruz the first (and only) Spanish winner, and Shohreh Aghdashloo the first (and only) Iranian nominee of Best Supporting Actress.

Hermione Baddeley's performance as a supporting actress in Room at the Top (1959), with two minutes and 20 seconds of screen time, is the shortest role to be nominated for an acting Academy Award.

Beatrice Straight's supporting role in Network (1976), at five minutes and 40 seconds, is the shortest performance to ever win an Academy Award.

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

There have been no posthumous nominations for this award.

Multiple nominations[link]

International presence[link]

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 for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

• Australia: Cate Blanchett
• Canada / New Zealand: Anna Paquin
• France: Juliette Binoche
• Greece: Katina Paxinou
• Republic of Ireland: Brenda Fricker
• Japan: Miyoshi Umeki
• Puerto Rico: Rita Moreno
• Russia: Lila Kedrova
• Spain: Penélope Cruz
• Sweden: Ingrid Bergman
• United Kingdom: Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Margaret Rutherford, Maggie Smith, Tilda Swinton, Rachel Weisz, Catherine Zeta-Jones

There have been two years in which all four of the top acting Academy Awards were presented to non-Americans (Europeans).

• At the 37th Academy Awards (1964), the winners were Rex Harrison (British), Julie Andrews (British), Peter Ustinov (British), and Lila Kedrova (Russian).
• At the 80th Academy Awards (2007), the winners were Daniel Day-Lewis (British and Irish), Marion Cotillard (French), Javier Bardem (Spanish), and Tilda Swinton (British).

See also[link]

• List of Academy Awards ceremonies
• List of Best Supporting Actress winners by age
• List of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (by actress)
• List of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (by film title)
• List of actors who have won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, a SAG, and a Critic's Choice Award for a single performance
• List of superlative Academy Award winners and nominees
• List of actors nominated for Academy Awards for foreign language performances
• List of actors nominated for two Academy Awards in the same year
• List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
• Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
• BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role

See also[link]

• 1936 in film

References[link]