Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the award has commonly been referred to as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. While actors are nominated for this award by Academy members who are actors and actresses themselves, winners are selected by the Academy membership as a whole. Under the system currently in place, an actor is nominated for a specific performance in a single film, and such nominations are limited to five per year.
Throughout the past 72 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, AMPAS has presented a total of 72 Best Supporting Actor awards to 65 different actors. Winners of this Academy Award of Merit receive the familiar Oscar statuette, depicting a gold-plated knight holding a crusader's sword and standing on a reel of film. Prior to the 16th Academy Awards ceremony (1943), however, they received a plaque. The first recipient was Walter Brennan, who was honored at the 9th Academy Awards ceremony (1936) for his performance in Come and Get It. The most recent recipient was Javier Bardem, who was honored at the 80th Academy Awards ceremony (2007) for his performance in No Country for Old Men.
Harold Russell was the first (and only) actor to win two Academy Awards for the same performance when he won both Best Supporting Actor and the Academy Honorary Award for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Thanks to a quirk of voting, in 1944 Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way became the only actor nominated in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories for the same performance, winning the latter. (Today, studios designate in which category they want a performer to compete.)
Robert De Niro's 1974 win as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II is unique as the only Supporting Oscar won for playing a part previously played by a Best Actor winner (Marlon Brando in The Godfather). De Niro and Benicio del Toro (who won for Traffic) are the only winners for a foreign-language performance in this category.
John Mills was the only actor (along with five actresses) ever to receive an Oscar nomination for a non-speaking role. Mills was nominated for, and won, Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a mute brain-damaged village idiot in Ryan's Daughter (1970).
The earliest nominee in this category who is still alive is James Whitmore (1949) followed by Karl Malden (1951). The earliest winner in this category who is still alive is Karl Malden (1951) followed by George Chakiris (1961).
Winners and nominees
Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by year of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the film's year of release. For example, the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor of 1999 was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees. For a list sorted by actor names, please see List of Best Supporting Actor nominees. For a list sorted by film titles, please see List of Best Supporting Actor nominees (films).
Beginning with the 1943 awards, winners in the supporting acting categories were awarded Oscar statuettes similar to those awarded to winners in all other categories, including the leading acting categories. Prior to this, however, winners in the supporting acting categories were awarded plaques.
As the Academy Awards are based in the United States and are centered on the Hollywood film industry, the majority of Academy Award winners have been Americans. Nonetheless, there is significant international presence at the awards, as evidenced by the following list of winners of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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