Inside the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Race: Five Standout Performances and One Likely Winner

After covering predictions for the first-ever Oscar for casting, we begin with the acting awards. I really do enjoy doing this a few times a year because it lets me talk about actors and their work and why they are being recognized. It also allows me to wax rhapsodic a bit, and you know how much I enjoy doing that.

Key Insights

Momentum has shifted late in the awards season as Teyana Taylor’s early-film tour de force gains traction among voters.

Narrative factors, including career recognition and performance impact across an entire film, could tip the Oscar race in Amy Madigan’s favor.

Breakout performances from international and emerging actors show how globally diverse the supporting actress field has become.

Get access to thousands
of high-quality roles.

JOIN FREE TODAY

There was a time this fall when it seemed like this was going to be one of the easiest categories to predict, in that it was essentially a runaway for one actress. That has changed markedly in the last number of weeks, though, as another actress has not just become a serious contender, she might just walk away with the award herself. Who am I talking about? Well, let’s see.

The nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role are Amy Madigan, Weapons, Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another, Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value.

Wunmi Mosaku is excellent in Sinners, as is everyone in the film, and she deserves to be here as much as anyone else. But her nomination is her award this year. Same can be said for the two actresses from Sentimental Value. I had never seen Lilleaas before, but was totally knocked out by her performance as the less damaged, but still melancholy, daughter of Stellan Skarsgård’s narcissistic filmmaker. Lilleaas’ character is a former child actress, a woman who so badly tried to please her distant director father that she acted in one of his movies before realizing it wasn’t going to do her any good in the long run. Now, she’s got a child of her own and a husband/partner who’s something of a pushover, but she at least has some control over her own life, unlike her big sister, Renate Reinsve, who is a walking exposed nerve.

There’s a moment, toward the end of the movie, when the two sisters are talking about how they survived their childhood, and Lilleaas’ Agnes looks with admiration at her sister and says, “It was easier for me. I had you.” It’s one of the most powerful moments in a powerful movie, and Lilleaas makes it her own by just saying it. Not milking it, not trying to make it into something bigger, just saying it in a conversation with the big sister she loves so dearly. It’s quite an announcement of arrival for the Norwegian actress, who won’t win this award, but will certainly be back.

Elle Fanning, on the other hand, has been on our screens for almost her entire life. She has always been good and has been rewarded for that work with numerous Emmy, Golden Globe and Actor Award nominations over the years, most recently for the Hulu series The Great (a fun show that also starred Nicholas Hoult), in which she played Catherine the Great. So it’s not like this performance is any kind of surprise. She’s a talented actress, and this role seemed to be tailor-made for her: an up-and-coming actress, well known, but not yet a true movie star, offered the role of a lifetime that she might have to walk away from because she’s not sure it’s a great fit. Fanning is really wonderful in the movie, but just like with her co-star, I don’t see a reality in which she wins.

Really, this is between Teyana Taylor and Amy Madigan. I honestly thought there was no chance anyone was going to challenge Madigan for this award, but Taylor is clearly making a run at her, peaking at just the right time. Make no mistake, Taylor gives a tour de force in One Battle After Another’s first 40 minutes, taking the movie entirely away from its star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Her appeal is undeniable, as is the power she brings to the movie.

As good as it is, though, I don’t think it compares to what Madigan does in Weapons. Remember yesterday when I said Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve gave two of the three best performances I saw this past year? Well, Madigan’s was the third. I understand Taylor’s appeal here, but for me, it comes down to a couple of things. The first is that Madigan’s villainous Aunt Gladys is a genuinely terrifying figure, one of the best horror movie characters of the 21st century. The second is that, while Taylor disappears after her movie’s first act, Madigan is a consistent factor throughout hers, and directly plays into the film’s climax, whereas Taylor is nowhere to be found in the finale of One Battle After Another. There’s also the fact that Madigan is a beloved professional who has put in more than four decades of great work, and if there’s a tiebreaker, I think that’s it.

I am not as confident in this category as I am in the one I wrote about yesterday, but I’m still going to stick with my gut and say that Madigan takes it.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Amy Madigan

WHO WILL WIN: Amy Madigan

Key Takeaways

The Best Supporting Actress race has tightened considerably, with Amy Madigan and Teyana Taylor emerging as the clear front-runners.

While several nominees deliver memorable performances, the competition ultimately centers on two standout turns with very different strengths.

Amy Madigan’s chilling and sustained performance in Weapons may ultimately give her the edge in one of the season’s closest acting races.