Supposedly Fun

We’re halfway through the decade, so this list is incomplete. Still, no sense waiting to start the conversation, right? I will keep adding Best Supporting Actress winners as the decade goes on and we’ll see how things shake out by the end.

A quick note on process: I will comment on whether or not a win was deserved, but that in and of itself cannot impact the ranking. And as time progresses and I revisit and rethink movies and performances, I reserve the right to make changes. These are fluid rankings for me, and since these are my lists I feel very comfortable with that.

5. Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

I have a feeling that history will not favor Jamie Lee Curtis’ win (mostly because many people at this moment aren’t looking at it kindly). This was bound to happen even if the actress who seemed to have a lock on this category (until Curtis’ surprise SAG victory) had won: Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

This is mainly because both women were running on a legacy campaign. Angela Bassett spent thirty years churning out great performances with little recognition after losing Best Actress to Holly Hunter in 1993. In the years since that loss, Bassett’s performance as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It found new levels of appreciation that caused some to question why Hunter was the runaway favorite that year (for the record, the answer is complicated because although The Piano was an Oscar favorite, there’s no denying that racial politics came into play to some degree). Unfortunately, Bassett’s second run at an Oscar ended the same way. However, I suspect people won’t be turning to her performance in Wakanda Forever with the same amount of respect in thirty years.

On the other hand, Jamie Lee Curtis had never had a shot at an Oscar before–despite a long and successful career in popular movies and a respectable pedigree (both of her parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, were Oscar nominees). But the Best Supporting Actress race for 2022 came down to a question of which overlooked actress should be rewarded at long last. How Curtis overtook Bassett is a difficult question–and one that is no less racially charged than Bassett’s previous loss.

It probably also helped Curtis that critics were more muted on Wakanda Forever than the original Black Panther, and Bassett faced a steep uphill climb in overcoming a genre bias against comic book movies. Curtis, meanwhile, starred in the most beloved and popular film of the year. Everything was so popular it swept every major Oscar category it was nominated for, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. As such, you could make a case that enthusiasm for her movie helped inspire people to vote for Curtis.

And while she’s coming in last in my ranking (so far), I don’t mean to be a hater. I’ve seen a lot of people deride Curtis’ performance as bland, but I think it’s so obvious that she’s having a blast making this movie that her joy becomes infectious as her frumpy villain moves about the screen. And her scene sitting outside the laundromat with Michelle Yeoh toward the end of the movie has a surprising amount of tenderness–a quality that wouldn’t exist without Curtis’ commitment to the role (and her chemistry with her costars).

Should have won in 2022: In my universe, Angela Bassett tied Holly Hunter for Best Actress in 1993 and Jamie Lee Curtis won a weak Best Actress race in 1994 for True Lies. With those wins in place (and no legacy question to answer), Kerry Condon is free to take the trophy for her stellar work in The Banshees of Inisherin.

4. Ariana DeBose, West Side Story (2021)

This was a difficult call because I think Ariana DeBose is great, possessing the same star quality as her predecessor, Rita Moreno. I just think this Anita suffers a bit from the rest of 2021’s West Side Story being so great. As good as the original movie version is, Rita Moreno was always on another level. Ariana DeBose matches that, but Spielberg manages to bring the rest of the movie up to that same level–which means Anita doesn’t stand out as much. It’s no fault of DeBose’s, and it’s still a great performance.

Should have won in 2021: DeBose deserved it, but pour one out for Kirsten Dunst, who did some excellent work in The Power of the Dog–and Aunjanue Ellis as well, who gave the best performance in King Richard (but maybe don’t tell that to Will Smith).

3. Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez (2024)

The Best Supporting Actor ranking for this decade is littered with category fraud (lead or co-lead performances that ran in the supporting category instead), but in Supporting Actress we had to get halfway through the decade before it became an issue. That’s because although Saldaña does not play the titular character, she has more screentime than the actress who does (who was nominated in Best Actress)–and Emilia follows Saldaña’s character much more closely to form the film’s narrative arc.

Saldaña is excellent as a hardworking, unappreciated lawyer worn out by the corruption she sees around her. She hits all the necessary notes: determination, strength, wariness, exhaustion, and hope. The only problem is that there’s no way this is a supporting performance.

Should have won in 2024: Sadly, if we move Saldaña to Best Actress, she most likely loses out to the stiffer competition from Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres, and winner Mikey Madison. Although we’ll never know, because it’s also possible that if Saldaña had been in the correct category before controversy otherwise sank Emilia Pérez‘s chances, she might have been able to build up sufficient momentum to crowd out the other actresses as they gained traction later in the season. It’s also true that Ariana Grande could be called a co-lead of Wicked. But I’m willing to go along with Grande in this category since so much of the narrative of Wicked centers on Elphaba’s story. So for me, it would have been Ariana Grande’s surprisingly powerful work as Glinda.

2. Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari (2020)

Like the Best Actress race for the same year, the Best Supporting Actress race felt wide open heading into the final stretch. Unlike the Best Actress race, though, there were signs at the end that people were beginning to zero in on Yuh-Jung Youn’s stellar performance in Minari. Still, there were a lot of Oscar pundits who thought Maria Bakalova could have won for her work in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, or Glenn Close could have gotten a win in acknowledgment for her career (nevermind that Hillbilly Elegy was a truly terrible movie). Thankfully, Youn’s momentum after her BAFTA speech turned out to be the real deal.

Playing a sassy grandmother can be a thankless part–indeed, it’s a trope that echoes throughout Hollywood history. And while actresses have won Oscars in this category for playing sassy old ladies before (Helen Hayes in Airport, Margaret Rutherford in The V.I.P.s, Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, etc.), it is rarely done with the care and subtlety of Youn. As the Korean grandmother who moves to Arkansas to help her daughter, Youn forms the heart of Minari and gives it its emotional resonance. She also goes through a full character arc with precision.

Should have won in 2020: I never understood the weird fascination with Maria Bakalova in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and I certainly wasn’t on board with Hillbilly Elegy. To me, Youn’s biggest competition would have been someone who wasn’t even nominated: Candice Bergen in Let Them All Talk. I still would have gone with Youn, though.

1. Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers (2023)

The most astonishing thing about Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s unprecedented dominance in the supporting actress category in 2023 is that her performance is exactly the kind of subtle but perfect work that can be easily overlooked in favor of more flashy acting. Randolph swept through award season with an impossibly perfect winning record–adored by both critical organizations and larger groups like The Academy, The Screen Actor’s Guild, The Golden Globes, and more.

What a joy (no pun intended), because Randolph is effortlessly flawless as Mary Lamb, a grieving mother working as the head cook at a New England prep school. She embodies Mary so fully that it doesn’t appear that she’s acting at all. Randolph navigates conversations about race, privilege, and grief without once feeling contrived or obvious. And when Mary breaks down and cries, it doesn’t feel like an overblown sequence that might as well be subtitled “OSCAR CLIP.” Instead, it feels like an earned and entirely genuine moment.

It’s rare to have such consensus over a performance, but it happened at the right time and for the right actress. Hopefully, all of Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s big wins (and excellent speeches) will usher in great new opportunities for an actress who has been putting in the work without recognition for too long.

Should have won in 2023: It’s possible that the supporting actress category would have been a more competitive race if Lily Gladstone had opted to run here instead of in the lead actress category. Ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t have to choose between the two because Da’Vine Joy Randolph deserved to take an Oscar home.

Other Rankings for the 2020s

Best Picture

Best Actor  •  Best Actress

Best Supporting Actor  • Best Supporting Actress

Best Original Song