Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Nominees are currently determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy.^[6]

Gale Sondergaard was the inaugural winner, for Anthony Adverse (1936).

Alice Brady won for In Old Chicago (1938).

Fay Bainter won for Jezebel (1938); also the first person nominated in both supporting and lead in the same year.

Hattie McDaniel won for Gone with the Wind (1939); first black person to ever win an Oscar.^[4]

Jane Darwell won for The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

Mary Astor won for The Great Lie (1941).

Teresa Wright won for Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Katina Paxinou won for For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).

Ethel Barrymore won for None but the Lonely Heart (1944).

Anne Revere won for National Velvet (1945).

Anne Baxter won for The Razor's Edge (1946).

Celeste Holm won for Gentleman's Agreement (1947).

Claire Trevor won for Key Largo (1948).

Mercedes McCambridge won for All the King's Men (1949).

Josephine Hull won for Harvey (1950).

Kim Hunter won for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Gloria Grahame won for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).

Donna Reed won for From Here to Eternity (1953).

Eva Marie Saint won for On the Waterfront (1954).

Jo Van Fleet won for East of Eden (1955).

Dorothy Malone won for Written on the Wind (1956).

Miyoshi Umeki won for Sayonara (1957); first East Asian acting winner.

Wendy Hiller won for Separate Tables (1958).

Shelley Winters won twice, for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965).

Shirley Jones won for Elmer Gantry (1960).

Rita Moreno won for West Side Story (1961); first Latina winner.

Patty Duke won for The Miracle Worker (1962).

Margaret Rutherford won for The V.I.P.s (1963).

Lila Kedrova won for Zorba the Greek (1964).

Sandy Dennis won for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Estelle Parsons won for Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

Ruth Gordon won for Rosemary's Baby (1968).

Goldie Hawn won for Cactus Flower (1969).

Helen Hayes won for Airport (1970); first to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting".

Cloris Leachman won for The Last Picture Show (1971).

Eileen Heckart won for Butterflies Are Free (1972).

Tatum O'Neal won for Paper Moon (1973); at age 10, youngest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Ingrid Bergman won for Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

Lee Grant won for Shampoo (1975).

Beatrice Straight won for Network (1976); shortest performance ever to win, clocking 5m2s of screentime.^[5]

Vanessa Redgrave won for Julia (1977).

Maggie Smith won, playing an Oscar loser, for California Suite (1978).

Meryl Streep won for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).

Mary Steenburgen won for Melvin (and Howard) (1980).

Maureen Stapleton won for Reds (1981).

Jessica Lange won for Tootsie (1982).

Linda Hunt won for portraying a cisgender male in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983).

Peggy Ashcroft won for A Passage to India (1984); this category's oldest winner, at age 77.

Anjelica Huston won for Prizzi's Honor (1985).

Dianne Wiest won twice, for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994).

Olympia Dukakis won for Moonstruck (1987).

Geena Davis won for The Accidental Tourist (1988).

Brenda Fricker won for My Left Foot (1989).

Whoopi Goldberg won for Ghost (1990).

Mercedes Ruehl won for The Fisher King (1991).

Marisa Tomei won for My Cousin Vinny (1992).

Anna Paquin won for The Piano (1993).

Mira Sorvino won for Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

Juliette Binoche won for The English Patient (1996).

Kim Basinger won for L.A. Confidential (1997).

Judi Dench won for Shakespeare in Love (1998).

Angelina Jolie won for Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Marcia Gay Harden won for Pollock (2000).

Jennifer Connelly won for A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Catherine Zeta-Jones won for Chicago (2002).

Renée Zellweger won for Cold Mountain (2003).

Cate Blanchett won for The Aviator (2004).

Rachel Weisz won for The Constant Gardener (2005).

Jennifer Hudson won for Dreamgirls (2006).

Tilda Swinton won for Michael Clayton (2007).

Penélope Cruz won for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

Mo'Nique won for Precious (2009).

Melissa Leo won for The Fighter (2010).

Octavia Spencer won for The Help (2011).

Anne Hathaway won for Les Misérables (2012).

Lupita Nyong'o won for 12 Years a Slave (2013).

Patricia Arquette won for Boyhood (2014).

Alicia Vikander won for The Danish Girl (2015).

Viola Davis won for Fences (2016).

Allison Janney won for I, Tonya (2017).

Regina King won for If Beale Street Could Talk (2018).

Laura Dern won for Marriage Story (2019).

Youn Yuh-Jung won for Minari (2020); first Korean-dialogue win.

Ariana DeBose won for West Side Story (2021); first openly queer POC to win.

Jamie Lee Curtis won for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

Da'Vine Joy Randolph won for The Holdovers (2023).

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year.^[7] For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months, from August 1 to July 31.^[8] For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the extended eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933.^[8] Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.^[8]

The following individuals received two Best Supporting Actress awards:

The following individuals received two or more Best Supporting Actress nominations:

There have been 36 instances in which films have produced more than one nominee within this category. Tom Jones (1963) was the only film which garnered three nominations, while all others obtained two.

Winners are in bold.

• Gone with the Wind (1939) – Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel
• The Little Foxes (1941) – Patricia Collinge and Teresa Wright
• Mrs. Miniver (1942) – May Whitty and Teresa Wright
• The Song of Bernadette (1943) – Gladys Cooper and Anne Revere
• Mildred Pierce (1945) – Eve Arden and Ann Blyth
• Gentleman's Agreement (1947) – Celeste Holm and Anne Revere
• I Remember Mama (1948) – Barbara Bel Geddes and Ellen Corby
• Come to the Stable (1949) – Celeste Holm and Elsa Lanchester
• Pinky (1949) – Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters
• All About Eve (1950) – Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter
• The High and the Mighty (1954) – Jan Sterling and Claire Trevor
• The Bad Seed (1956) – Eileen Heckart and Patty McCormack
• Peyton Place (1957) – Hope Lange and Diane Varsi
• Imitation of Life (1959) – Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore
• Tom Jones (1963) – Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman
• Othello (1965) – Joyce Redman and Maggie Smith
• Airport (1970) – Helen Hayes and Maureen Stapleton
• The Last Picture Show (1971) – Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman
• Paper Moon (1973) – Madeline Kahn and Tatum O'Neal
• Nashville (1975) – Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin
• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) – Jane Alexander and Meryl Streep
• Tootsie (1982) – Teri Garr and Jessica Lange
• The Color Purple (1985) – Margaret Avery and Oprah Winfrey
• Working Girl (1988) – Joan Cusack and Sigourney Weaver
• Enemies, A Love Story (1989) – Anjelica Huston and Lena Olin
• Bullets Over Broadway (1994) – Jennifer Tilly and Dianne Wiest
• Almost Famous (2000) – Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand
• Gosford Park (2001) – Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith
• Chicago (2002) – Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Babel (2006) – Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi
• Doubt (2008) – Amy Adams and Viola Davis
• Up in the Air (2009) – Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick
• The Fighter (2010) – Amy Adams and Melissa Leo
• The Help (2011) – Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer
• The Favourite (2018) – Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) – Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu

Winners are in bold.

• Anita from West Side Story (Rita Moreno, 1961) and West Side Story (Ariana DeBose, 2021)
• Sofia from The Color Purple (Oprah Winfrey, 1985) and The Color Purple (Danielle Brooks, 2023)

• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
• All Academy Award acting nominees
• List of actors with more than one Academy Award nomination in the acting categories
• List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
• BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
• Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Performance
• Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress
• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
• Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
• List of Academy Award–nominated films