- published: 23 Mar 2016
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This is a list of awards for supporting actor. These are accolades given by a group of film or television professionals in recognition of the work of supporting and character actors. Most awards for supporting actors are gender-specific.
A supporting actor is an actor who performs roles in a play or film other than that of the leads.
These roles range from bit parts to secondary leads. They are sometimes but not necessarily character roles. A supporting actor must also use restraint not to upstage the main actor/actress in the play/movie. In earlier times these were often ethnic stereotypes. The title is usually specific to the performance, that is, a person may be a supporting actor in one film and the leading actor in the next. An individual who typically plays supporting roles is considered a character actor.
In television, a day player refers to most performers with supporting speaking roles hired on a daily basis without long-term contracts.
Supporting roles may be pivotal or vital to the story. In recognition of important nature of this work, the theater and film industries give separate awards to the Best Supporting Actor and actress. A supporting actor/actress can also be known as a 'sidekick'.
Patricia T. Arquette (born April 8, 1968) is an American actress and director. She played the lead character in the supernatural drama series Medium for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
Arquette was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Lewis Arquette, an actor, and Brenda "Mardi" Olivia (née Nowak), an actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher and therapist. Arquette's mother was Jewish, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and Arquette's father was a convert to Islam and related to explorer Meriwether Lewis. Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette, and her siblings are actors Rosanna, Alexis, Richmond and David Arquette.
Arquette was raised in Virginia and California.
In 1987, Arquette's first starring roles were as pregnant teenager Stacy in television film Daddy, boarding school student Zero in Pretty Smart, and the attention-getting Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. In 1991, she won a CableACE Award for her portrayal of a deaf epileptic in Wildflower. In 1993, she starred in Tony Scott's True Romance. She has since appeared in such critically acclaimed movies as Ed Wood as the "worst ever" film director's eventual wife, Beyond Rangoon, Ethan Frome, Lost Highway, Little Nicky, Stigmata, Bringing Out the Dead, Human Nature, Disney's Holes, and Flirting with Disaster.