Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars: What the last 10 winners tell us about this year

As we begin to edge our way toward Oscars season, so, too, will our anticipation for the upcoming contenders increase. But to figure out who might get nominated in the near future, we need to look back into the past (duh, that’s literally the job of an Oscarologist). We’re going to do that for all four acting categories, starting here with Best Supporting Actress. So, for starters, sink your teeth into the below chart that takes a look at the last 10 years of Oscars history.

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Now, there are two obvious takeaways straight off the bat: drama is the preferred genre in this category, while they actually prefer rewarding performances of fictional characters over real people. Eight out of the 10 winners were in dramas — Youn Yuh-jung (“Minari”), Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”), Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”), Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”), Viola Davis (“Fences”), Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”), Patricia Arquette (“Boyhood”), and Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”). The latter winner was a historical drama/epic, but still very much a drama.

There was one winner from a sci-fi (Jamie Lee Curtis for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and one from a musical (Ariana DeBose for “West Side Story”). Other than that, voters stuck with dramas.

Eight out of 10 winners played fictional characters. Only Vikander and Nyong’o won for portraying real people, which is surprising considering the long-running cliche that the academy love actors in real-life roles. Not here they don’t. They like fictional characters best. In particular, they like mothers — Arquette, Davis, Janney, King, Yuh-Jung all play mothers. Plus, they like a villainous streak, too. Dern, Janney, and Curtis all play characters with a naughtiness in them, to varying degrees.

This chart also shows that they like to bestow the win on a rookie contender. Only Davis and Dern were past Oscar nominees at their time of winning. Even then, they were only Oscar nominees — not winners. The other eight each won on their first nomination. But as were five out of 10 of these women: Davis, Janney, Dern, Yuh-jung, and Curtis.

And do also like their Best Supporting Actress champion to be part of a genuine contender. Seven out of the 10 winners were won for films that also landed Best Picture nominations. Only Vikander (“The Danish Girl”), Janney (“I, Tonya”), and King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) won for non-best Picture nominees. Only two of them starred in Best Picture winners, however — Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”) and Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”).

Right, that’s that chart well and truly dissected. Now let’s look ahead to this year’s contenders. Currently, we are predicting that the following performers will be nominated for Best Supporting Actress: Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Taraji P. Henson (“The Color Purple”), Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”), Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer”), and Julianne Moore (“May December”).

Gladstone, Brooks, and Blunt are all looking for their first Oscar nominations, so they fit the bill in that category. Moore, however, would be the first winner of this category who was already an Oscar winner since Dianne Wiest won in 1995 for “Bullets Over Broadway” (she previously won Best Supporting Actress in 1987 for “Hannah and Her Sisters”). That is a hell of a streak and, despite Moore’s veteran status, does raise a big question mark over her ability to win this category this year. She previously won Best Actress in 2014 for “Still Alice,” while she was previously nominated for Best Actress in 2000 for “The End of the Affair” and in 2003 for “Far From Heaven.” She also was nominated for Best Supporting Actress twice, too — in 1998 for “Boogie Nights” and in 2003 for “The Hours.” What also puts a dampener on Moore’s chances is the fact that we don’t think “May December” will be nominated for Best Picture. The film, by the way, is a fictional drama — it follows Moore as a married woman who years ago had a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old boy. That boy is now her husband (Charles Melton) while Natalie Portman plays an actress who visits them in order to do research for a film based on their scandal. It’s a meaty concept, for sure, and there will likely be a colorful streak of “bad guy” in her performance but it seems like a lot is against Moore at this moment in time.

Henson is the only other previous Oscar nominee in our current predicted lineup. She was previously nominated in this category in 2009 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” That status as an Oscar nominee may weaken her chances of winning but she and Brooks are in good stead with “The Color Purple,” which is a fictional, musical drama (tick tick tick) about a struggling African American woman in the early 1900s in the South of the USA. Henson plays Sofia while Brooks plays Shug Avery. Here’s a good omen: both of those roles landed nominations for their original performers in the 1985 movie — Oprah Winfrey as Sofia and Margaret Avery as Shug. History could repeat itself here.

Blunt, meanwhile, plays Kitty Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer,” which depicts the true story of how J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb. Blunt is looking for her first bid after going close so many times (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Girl on the Train,” “Mary Poppins Returns,” “A Quiet Place”) so she would be a first-time nominee who is overdue some love. That could help her a lot. She plays a “long-suffering wife” character, too, which is a type of role that has been nominated before — Aunjanue Ellis in 2022 for “King Richard,” Amy Adams in 2019 for “Vice,” and Davis in 2017 for “Fences.” She is playing a real person, which we know the academy doesn’t like that much here, but “Oppenheimer” will be nominated for Best Picture, so that might cancel that out.

And, last but not least, is Gladstone, who stars in “Killers of the Flower Moon” as Mollie Burkhart, the on-screen wife of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character. Martin Scorsese‘s film depicts the real-life murders of several Osage tribe members and the subsequent investigation in the USA in the 1920s. We think that “Killers of the Flower Moon” will be a leading contender for Best Picture (we currently think it will win) while Gladstone is an Oscar newcomer. However, she does play a real person, so that might hinder her.

However, there are a couple of names outside of our predicted top five who might have something to say about being left out. Davis plays Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan‘s mother, in the biopic drama “Air.” However, while Davis could go the way of Ruby Dee in “American Gangster” or Judi Dench in “Shakespeare in Love” (little screen time, big impact), her performance as a real person in a film we don’t think has a chance at a Best Picture nomination does count against her. Plus, as a previous Oscar winner, she’d have the same problem as Moore. However, she does play a mother, which we know the academy likes. What looks like a more likely option, though, is Da’Vine Joy Randolph in “The Holdovers,” which follows a disliked teacher at a college who must look after students who stay behind during Christmastime. Randolph has never been nominated for an Oscar, she is playing a fictional character, and we think that “The Holdovers” will be nominated for Best Picture. Check check check. So, Gladstone and Brooks seem like the strongest contenders, while Blunt and Henson could be safe bets. However, Davis and, in particular, Randolph, will be snapping at the heels of Moore for that fifth spot.

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