Academy Award for best supporting actress | History, List, Years, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)

Each year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honours the actress in a supporting role who delivered the most outstanding performance in a movie of a given year. The winning actress is given a gold-plated statuette known as an Oscar at the annual ceremony. The first Academy Awards presentation and banquet took place in 1929, but prizes for performances in supporting roles were not introduced until 1937, honouring films released in 1936. Below is a list of the winning actresses and the movies for which they won. The year is when the Oscar was presented.

1930s

• 1937: Gale Sondergaard (Anthony Adverse)

1940s and 1950s

• 1943: Teresa Wright (Mrs. Miniver)
• 1946: Anne Revere (National Velvet)
• 1947: Anne Baxter (The Razor’s Edge)
• 1948: Celeste Holm (Gentleman’s Agreement)
• 1950: Mercedes McCambridge (All the King’s Men)
• 1951: Josephine Hull (Harvey)
• 1957: Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind)
• 1958: Miyoshi Umeki (Sayonara)
• 1959: Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables)

1960s and 1970s

• 1965: Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek)
• 1973: Eileen Heckart (Butterflies Are Free)
• 1976: Lee Grant (Shampoo)
• 1977: Beatrice Straight (Network)

1980s and 1990s

• 1982: Maureen Stapleton (Reds)
• 1984: Linda Hunt (The Year of Living Dangerously)
• 1988: Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck)
• 1990: Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot)
• 1992: Mercedes Ruehl (The Fisher King)

2000s and 2010s

• 2010: Mo’Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)
• 2019: Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)

2020s

• 2021: Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari)
• 2022: Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
• 2024: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.