The Oscar Quest Reconsidered: Ranking the Best Supporting Actresses
I originally posted a version of this list in early 2012. Mostly because I like making lists. There was no real methodology to it. I looked back at it at some point in the past four months and saw it skewed heavily toward personal preference. The performances I liked the best went to the top, and the performances I thought were terrible winners went straight to the bottom.
Since the Oscar Quest, Version 2 that I’ve been doing, I noticed the point of it was more to reflect what my thoughts were now five years later from the completion/posting of all the original articles. I tried to stay away from redoing everything I did the first time, because a lot of it felt like it begat negativity on my part. I really don’t want to shit on things now so much as I’d want to openly discuss what is or isn’t a good choice historically.
Because that’s now where I’m at, I think redoing these lists is something I can get away with. If only to give myself a marker for where my head is at now.
I’m not putting any stock into these whatsoever. I don’t even really want to make these easily findable for people, though I guess I should, if only to track changes over the years. I was going to write up actual opinions for each one, justifying its position, but that’s a fool’s errand. That’s for people looking for extra clicks and people writing in the comments. I don’t want that. This is purely for me.
The first time I wrote this up, I specified that the rankings were not me attempting to make a list for everyone to follow. It was just my favorites. This time, I think what I ended up doing was trying to factor in everything into the decision. How iconic the performance/film is, how good of a choice it was in its year (extremely strong choices get slight bumps, and extremely weak choices get slight deductions), and also how I feel about them.
So here’s where my head is at now on all the Best Supporting Actress winners:
1. Hattie McDaniel, Gone With the Wind
2. Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker
3. Meryl Streep, Kramer vs. Kramer
4. Rita Moreno, West Side Story
5. Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously
6. Estelle Parsons, Bonnie and Clyde
7. Brenda Fricker, My Left Foot
8. Mo’Nique, Precious
9. Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath
10. Viola Davis, Fences
11. Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire
12. Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
13. Tatum O’Neal, Paper Moon
14. Ruth Gordon, Rosemary’s Baby
15. Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show
16. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
17. Mercedes McCambridge, All the King’s Men
18. Claire Trevor, Key Largo
19. Jo Van Fleet, East of Eden
20. Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny
21. Olympia Dukakis, Moonstruck
22. Cate Blanchett, The Aviator
23. Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite
24. Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
25. Katina Paxinou, For Whom the Bell Tolls
26. Shelley Winters, The Diary of Anne Frank
27. Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
28. Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
29. Anjelica Huston, Prizzi’s Honor
30. Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind
31. Shelley Winters, A Patch of Blue
32. Mary Steenburgen, Melvin and Howard
33. Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
34. Eva Marie Saint, On the Waterfront
35. Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
36. Dianne Wiest, Hannah and Her Sisters
37. Peggy Ashcroft, A Passage to India
38. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
39. Juliette Binoche, The English Patient
40. Mercedes Ruehl, The Fisher King
41. Maureen Stapleton, Reds
42. Dianne Wiest, Bullets Over Broadway
43. Beatrice Straight, Network
44. Judi Dench, Shakespeare in Love
45. Maggie Smith, California Suite
46. Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost
47. Vanessa Redgrave, Julia
48. Jessica Lange, Tootsie
49. Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
50. Kim Basinger, L.A. Confidential
51. Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
52. Goldie Hawn, Cactus Flower
53. Anne Revere, National Velvet
54. Lila Kedrova, Zorba the Greek
55. Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables
56. Anna Paquin, The Piano
57. Lee Grant, Shampoo
58. Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
59. Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry
60. Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind
61. Anne Baxter, The Razor’s Edge
62. Ethel Barrymore, None But the Lonely Heart
63. Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted
64. Donna Reed, From Here to Eternity
65. Josephine Hull, Harvey
66. Teresa Wright, Mrs. Miniver
67. Geena Davis, The Accidental Tourist
68. Margaret Rutherford, The VIPs
69. Helen Hayes, Airport
70. Gloria Grahame, The Bad and the Beautiful
71. Celeste Holm, Gentleman’s Agreement
72. Eileen Heckart, Butterflies Are Free
73. Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock
74. Mary Astor, The Great Lie
75. Octavia Spencer, The Help
76. Alice Brady, In Old Chicago
77. Fay Bainter, Jezebel
78. Ingrid Bergman, Murder on the Orient Express
79. Gale Sondergaard, Anthony Adverse
80. Miyoshi Umeki, Sayonara
81. Renée Zellweger, Cold Mountain
Were the hell did that number one come from such a two-dimensional performance ?
June 4, 2017 at 10:04 am
In all the lists I’ve seen, I have never seen Mo’Nique’s performance in Precious rank any lower than the Top 10. An amazing performance especially from someone who was mostly known as a comedian before that film.
December 28, 2017 at 10:17 pm