The Top 25 Best Supporting Actress Winners So Far (Updated for 2025)

How about a big one today, ladies and gentlemen? Continuing a tradition I’ve been doing for years, I’m ranking the newest crop of Academy Award winners. For nearly all of the Oscar categories, you’ll see me list the top 25 recipients of that prize. Sometimes, our newest winner will appear. Other times, they’ll be relegated to the Honorable Mention category. Who knows, maybe one or two won’t even make the cut? It’s a list series that I’ll do each and every single year, in the weeks after the ceremony concludes. So, while this is a fun way to think about the Oscars in the aftermath of the latest telecast, it’s also a beginning for another column here on the site. Of course, definitely show us your own lists as well, in the comments section below. We’re more than keen to know what you think!

This week, as mentioned above, we’re doing a big one, as it’s Best Supporting Actress time. As I like to say, this category can often be a hard one to peg down. Some years, it’s an embarrassment of riches in the category. Other years, it can lag a bit behind. Regardless, the winners are a wide assortment of some of the best the business has to offer. Spoiler alert: I have a controversial number one pick, in that I still rank Marisa Tomei‘s turn in My Cousin Vinny as the best of the Supporting Actress Oscar winners. It remains one of the best things that the Academy Awards have ever done. Where does our newest winner, Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez, rank as compared to prior ones like Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, Jamie Lee Curtis for Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Ariana DeBose for her role in the remake of West Side Story? Find out below…

Here are what I consider to be the 25 best winners of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, to date:

25. Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

24. Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck)

23. Dianne Wiest (Bullets over Broadway)

22. Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

21. Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

20. Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker)

19. Beatrice Straight (Network)

18. Meryl Streep (Kramer vs. Kramer)

17. Viola Davis (Fences)

16. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago)

15. Ruth Gordon (Rosemary’s Baby)

14. Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)

13. Cate Blanchett (The Aviator)

12. Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted)

11. Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon)

10. Cloris Leachman (The Last Picture Show)

9. Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

8. Mo’Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)

7. Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite)

6. Rita Moreno (West Side Story)

5. Anna Paquin (The Piano)

4. Eva Marie Saint (On the Waterfront)

3. Dianne Wiest (Hannah and her Sisters)

2. Kim Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire)

1. Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny)

Honorable Mention: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood), Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk), Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez), and Youn Yuh-jung (Minari)

Stay tuned for another category early next week!