Best Supporting Actress – 1983

Official Nominations: Linda Hunt. Cher. Glenn Close. Amy Irving. Alfre Woodward.

Linda Hunt picked up a deserving win this year – except for the fact that The Year Of Living Dangerously was a 1982 movie and therefore she’s not in for my consideration. Cher picked up her first nomination as Karen Silkwood’s roommate in Silkwood – it wasn’t her first performance, but it was certainly her first serious role and her breakthrough as an actress. Glenn Close is always good and may be the standout actress in The Big Chill, while Amy Irving received the pre-requisite Musical Acting nomination for Yentl. Finally, Alfre Woodward received her first and so far only Oscar nomination for Cross Creek. 

My Winner: Cher

My Nominations: Cher. Glenn Close. Meg Tilly. Louise Fletcher. Susan Sarandon. Barbara Hershey. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

Only Cher and Close make it over to my personal list. From The Big Chill, joining Close, is Meg Tilly as the younger newbie of the group. Louise Fletcher perhaps should have made my Best Actress list instead as she is a lead within the cast of Brainstorm. It’s arguably her best performance, although most people will understandably point to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The sad fact is that a film called Brainstorm would never be allowed anywhere near The Oscars.

Elsewhere, Susan Sarandon is a standout alongside Bowie and Deneuve in The Hunger, Barbara Hershey deserves a nod alongside all the men in The Right Stuff, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is the sole innocent voice in the midst of all the chaos and debauchery in Scarface. 

My Winner: Louise Fletcher

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1982

Official Nominations: Jessica Lange. Glenn Close. Teri Garr. Kim Stanley. Lesley Ann Warren.

A solid if unremarkable list this year, with Jessica Lange picking up the win for Tootsie as a struggling actress in a dodgy relationship with her director. The weird thing is… it should be a Best Actress nomination, not a support. The support pick should stay with Teri Garr in the same movie as a somewhat more ditzy up and coming actress enamoured with Dustin Hoffman’s character. Both are good – Lange especially. Close is great in her debut, The World According To Garp, playing Robin Williams’ mother while Kim Stanley plays the mother of Frances Farmer (Lange again). She’s fine, but it’s a Lange vehicle. Finally, we get our mandatory musical nomination with Leslie Ann Warren as the somewhat unhinged gal to a local gangster. Fine.

My Winner: Jessica Lange

My Nominations: Sean Young. Adrienne Barbeau. Phoebe Cates. Karen Allen. Linda Hunt.

Lets get the silliness out of the way first – Linda Hunt wins this very award for The Year Of Living Dangerously in 1983. It’s a 1982 movie, so I’m sticking her here instead, for yet another gender/race-bending role. Questionable these days for numerous reasons, but she’s great.

Beyond Hunt, all of my nominations are new picks. Sean Young is the glassy eyed replicant, foil to Harrison Ford’s Deckard in Blade Runner and it remains the performance she is most remembered for – somehow more human than the people and machines around her, but with the same coldness which is so pervasive throughout the film. Phoebe Cates appears in her most iconic role as the literal girl of your dreams, but as with many of the characters in Fast Times, the writing and performances are such that she is elevated above a one note caricature into a well rounded coming of age icon.

Karen Allen attempts to break free of her Raiders Of The Lost Ark fame by playing as Albert Finney’s mistress in the gloomy Shoot The Moon, a film in which the wrong stars got the attention. Finally, I’ll allow myself a bit of a personal preference for Adrienne Barbeau as she gives one of the most memorable performances in any anthology movie, that of the sneering overbearing wife Wilma in Creepshow. She has a whale of time, as do we watching her.

My Winner: Linda Hunt

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1981

Official Nominations: Maureen Stapleton. Melinda Dillon. Joan Fonda. Joan Hackett. Elizabeth McGovern.

There’s nothing this year I’d genuinely pick from the official nominations – a problem this category has had for years. I’m not a huge fan of any of the films and I don’t feel any of the performances are particularly worthy. I think Elizabeth McGovern is the most memorable, so lets go with her.

My Winner: Elizabeth McGovern

My Nominations: Dee Hepburn. Virginia Hey.

I have to play fast and loose with the rules this year to find anything I’d really like to nominate here. I’m sure there are other options, but these were the only two which felt right to me. Deep Hepburn is the titular Gregory’s Girl and is perhaps more accurately described as the lead actress, but the film is more about Gregory’s awkward interaction with various girls as he pines for the mysterious Dorothy. It’s a charming film and a good example of how to do a British Rom Com the right way, with Hepburn making an immediate, enigmatic impression.

Then we have Virginia Hey as The Warrior Woman in The Road Warrior. Is there enough here to warrant an Oscar nomination? Probably not, but as a proto version of the later Sarah Connor and Aliens-era Ripley, she certainly ticks all the boxes while also being one of those characters who stuck in my memory at a young age.

My Winner: Virginia Hey.

A controversial year then. Or a crap one. Let me know your picks in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1980

Official Nominations: Mary Steenburgen. Ellen Brennan. Eva La Gallienne. Cathy Moriarty. Diana Scarwid.

Honestly, there’s not a lot to choose from here with a list of actresses your regular movie goer wouldn’t recognise. You could say the same most the majority of the movies which contain the performances. Raging Bull is the one everyone knows, with Cathy Moriarty playing Jake’s object of obsession. She’s good, but it’s little more than the classic ‘pretty girl turns manic’ performance and has a lot in common with Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas. Good performance, but she’s not what you remember from the film.

The official winner this year was Mary Steenburgen playing another wife in Melvin & Howard. She’s the long suffering wife of the eternal screw up, Melvin, and she is always looking for her own way out. Another good performance, but nothing you haven’t seen before. Ellen Brennan plays the stereotype ‘authority figure tries to control/sabotage the star’ role against Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin. Once again, nothing you haven’t seen in any number of other films, though it’s more usual to have a man in this type of performance. She’s funny, and plays off Hawn with chemistry.

Our final two are the least well known performances, performers, and films. Diana Scarwid is the potential love interest of the suicidal Roary – not sure why this was nominated but it’s not a great year. The last nod is a veteran nod – Eva La Gallienne a star of stage more often than screen with performances going back to the 1910s. Burstyn is what you remember from Resurrection with Gallienne playing the grandmother attempting to ground Burstyn’s character after her sudden fame.

My Winner: Cathy Moriarty

My Nominations: Cathy Moriarty. Mary Steenburgen. Beverly D’Angelo. Nathalie Baye. Cherrie Currie.

I add three new nominees to the two taken from the Official list. Beverly D’Angelo, more known for her comedic roles, makes an early dramatic impact appearing in The Coal Miner’s Daughter as Patsy Cline and earned herself a Golden Globe nomination. Nathalie Baye excels alongside Isabell Huppert in Godard’s Every Man For Himself. I’m not sure how I feel about the film and you may be unsure as to whether or not Baye or Huppert is the lead. While well received, it’s not my favourite Godard film, but there’s no doubting the performances. Finally, Cherrie Currie of The Runaways fame tries her hand at acting in Foxes and makes us wonder why she didn’t become a bigger success in that field. Drug addiction seemed to affect the roles she could get, a shame not least because of her presence and performance as the rebellious and abused teenage girl whose behaviour and fate mirror the lives of the central characters. While I feel my picks are more interesting than most of the Official picks, it’s difficult to vote against Raging Bull and Moriarty.

My Winner: Cathy Moriarty

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1979

Official Nominations: Meryl Streep. Jane Alexander. Barbara Barrie. Candice Bergen. Mariel Hemmingway.

We have another selection of crap to wade through this year – highlighted by the fact that Meryl Streep was nominated (and won) here instead of being in the Lead category. That’s purely because they wanted both Field and Streep as winners. In any case, Streep is the the choice here. She is joined by another Kramer Vs Kramer star – Jane Alexander – as the neighbour who, at different times, befriends both Kramer and Kramer. She’s good, as she always is. Barbara Barrie as the mum in Breaking Away is another puzzler – it’s a veteran nomination without her really being a veteran in the movie sense, and the role and the performance aren’t anything out of the ordinary. It’s another case of The Academy liking a particular film, then chucking a pile of awards at at.

The final two nominations are not something I would personally ever choose, with Bergen being a mostly one-joke unlikable character, played with conviction of course, and Hemmingway coming across as the latest unfortunate victim of Woody Allen’s filthy games. The performance is okay. As much as Streep shouldn’t be in this category, she’s the only choice.

My Winner: Meryl Streep

My Nominations: Jessica Lange. Meryl Streep. Talia Shire. Pat Evison.

No-one makes it over to my list this year. Is that a first? If The Academy is going to put Meryl here, then I’m going to put Jessica Lange. Know that I’ll be grasping and reaching a little this year. It’s more of a supporting role than Streep’s. Lange plays the Angel Of Death in All That Jazz who watches over Gideon in his final moments, often in surreal scenes. But wait, Meryl Streep is on my list – for a different movie – The Seduction Of Joe Tynan – one of those forgotten political dramas that was going out of vogue. Streep plays a married woman who begins an affair with Joe Tynan – it’s Streep so you know what you’re getting, even if it isn’t one of her most memorable performances. Talia Shire I nominate because she’s still great as Adrian in the Rocky sequel (and there isn’t much else to choose from) and Evison I nominate for the little known Australian movie Tim where she stars as Mel Gibson’s protective mother. A crap year all round, so pick whoever you like really.

My Winner: Jessica Lange

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1978

Official Nominations: Maggie Smith. Dyan Cannon. Penelope Milford. Maureen Stapleton. Meryl Streep.

One thing that has been reinforced as I go through these Oscar posts is the fact that some of these performers and directors – even though they were nominated for, and in some cases won – the most prestigious award in all of entertainment, have all but disappeared from public consciousness. This happens almost every year, and you can tell in the Awards in recent years that there will be that nominated performer who most people will never hear from again. Then again, providing that person still works, all it takes is one more appearance in a hit movie or show, or one more appearance in something ‘important’ to put them back into the hearts and minds of the masses. I always used to assume that once you made it, you had made it for life. And while that is true to some extent – they can’t ever take away what you achieved – it doesn’t mean you’re going to be remembered. This is even more prevalent in music – look at some of the artists of the 1930s-1960s – people who sold millions of copies, toured the world, and had numerous number 1 albums and songs – almost no-one today knows they exist.

Which brings me back to this category – Meryl Streep everyone knows, and the same goes for Maggie Smith. Maybe without Downton Abbey she’d have fallen by the wayside. Aww balls, there’s a Downton Abbey movie coming out this year (time of writing, 4.07pm GMT 26th March 2019) so she’s bound to get a stupid Oscar Nomination for it, assuming she’s in it. Maureen Stapleton… most more dedicated film fans will know her but if you only watch recent stuff then obviously you will be less familiar. The other two nominees; you’d struggle to find anyone on the street who would know who they are. Case in point – Dyan Cannon was married to Carey Grant and was nominated for three Oscars, yet she’s not exactly a household name. She did have a prominent return in the late 90s with a recurring role in Ally McBeal – that show that made idiots want to be lawyers. She has a definite comic flair, hence her nomination this year in Heaven Can Wait. Penelope Milford is even less well known, due to appearances in lesser films, and on stage. Nevertheless, she netted Coming Home yet another acting nomination this year as the sister to one of the returning vets who has to deal with the fallout of their trauma.

Maggie Smith won her second Oscar this year for California Suite in which she ironically plays a down on her luck actress who has just received her first Oscar nomination. For me, not a huge fan of Neil Simon’s work, it’s an okay film and an okay performance in a weak year for actresses. Meryl Streep then, in one of her true breakout roles, even though she’d already been good before this. As much as I love The Deer Hunter, Streep doesn’t have all that much to do in the film and it’s a fairly bland role. She isn’t weak by any means, but this is a film about the male performances and if it was any smaller name here instead of Streep, you’d forget her. That leaves Maureen Stapleton for Interiors. Woody Allen movies aren’t usually my thing, and while Stapleton gets plenty of mileage out of the loud and uncouth woman trope, it’s again not something I would pick. A weak year then, so most people will go with their preference. Smith seems like the most obvious choice.

My Winner: Maggie Smith

My Nominations: Maggie Smith. Linda Manz. Brooke Shields. Dyan Cannon.

I go for a couple of child performances this year. Brooke Shields, as the young girl being brought up in a whorehouse, is particularly strong but it probably deserves to be in the Best Actress category. The year is weak though, so I’m adding it here. Linda Manz is the young sister of our anti-hero in Days Of Heaven and acts as the narrator so we see the film technically through her eyes – potentially making her a contender for lead too. I don’t know anymore – it’s a good performance in a bad year.

My Winner: Brooke Shields

Best Supporting Actress – 1977

Official Nominations: Vanessa Redgrave. Melinda Dillon. Leslie Browne. Quinn Cummings. Tuesday Weld.

It’s another unimpressive list on the surface, with Vanessa Redgrave finally walking away with her win as Julia. Part of me knows it’s a win due to her other performances over the years, but it remains a good showing for the actress. The unfortunately named Quinn Cummings only appeared in a couple of movies, in The Goodbye Girl she’s okay in the role of annoying smartass child while Leslie Browne is a real life dancer thrown into the deep end with a role in The Turning Point which required a better actress. Melinda Dillon is the petrified mother from Close Encounters who sees a UFO and goes on an obsessive romp around the country with Richard Dreyfuss – again decent, but not sure it’s award worthy, while Tuesday Weld plays Diane Keaton’s sister in Looking For Mr Goodbar and is good enough to hold her own.

My Winner: Vanessa Redgrave

My Nominations: Joan Bennett. Barbara Bach. Sissy Spacek.

I’m not sure any of this year’s performances are genuinely good enough to warrant a nomination and I don’t personally love them enough to pick them myself, which is what these posts are all about. In that case it’s a new batch of nominees. You could just as easily take Alida Valli for Susperia, but I think Joan Bennett edges it for me – two old Hollywood matriarchs lending class to the otherwise creepy proceedings. It’s not often anyone mentions Bond girls for awards, but Barbara Bach was one of the first Bond girls who stood out from the pack, as a character and as a performer – her Agent XXX every bit the spy as Bond himself. Sissy Spacek gets a nod from me for her performance in 3 Women. Normally I wouldn’t say any of these performances are strong enough to win, but it’s slim pickings. When in doubt, go with your favourite.

My Winner: Barbara Bach

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1976

Official Nominations: Beatrice Straight. Jane Alexander. Jodie Foster. Lee Grant. Piper Laurie.

This should be fairly straight-forwards. Beatrice Straight was your official winner this year, but she’s the first to get dropped from my list – nothing wrong with the performance, but it’s clearly a veteran nod and she’s only in the film for a handful of minutes. Lee Grant is next to go – Voyage Of The Damned a strange film in that it has a superb case but was pretty much ignored by critics and audiences and has never found a following. It feels like a timely film deserving of being retold in today’s climate of political inhumanity and immigration paranoia. Grant is good, but nothing out of the ordinary. I feel similar about Jane Alexander in All The President’s Men. That leaves the two best picks – Jodie Foster as the young, very young, prostitute in Taxi Driver – as brave a performance as you’re every likely to see, and obvious from the first moment that she would become a star. Finally, Piper Laurie as Carrie’s mother is a terrifying vision of closet religion or Christian zealotry, using her past sins and guilt to drive her daughter to murderous insanity. After a fifteen year break from the industry, it’s one of the finest return performances in movie history.

My Winner: Piper Laurie

My Nominations: Piper Laurie. Jodie Foster. Billie Whitelaw.

If we’re nominating people for very small roles, then one of the most memorable supporting performances of 1976 is that of Billie Whitelaw as Damien’s Nanny in The Omen. Indeed, it’s the only addition I’m making this year – the creepy nanny trope has been around for decades, but Whitelaw’s performance is the pinnacle. To keep things fair, I’ll give Foster the win this time around.

My Winner: Jodie Foster

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1975

Official Nominations: Lee Grant. Ronee Blakely. Lily Tomlin. Sylvia Miles. Brenda Vaccaro

Lee Grant picked up the official win this year for Shampoo, continuing her successful return from blacklisting – a good performance but a win that nevertheless feels like an apologetic gift. Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin both shine in Nashville as the up and coming sweetheart and the established Gospel singer respectively. Sylvia Miles gets her second bizarre nomination for a film she barely appears in – Farewell, My Lovely, while Brenda Vaccaro’s nomination is equally strange – an okay performance in an okay film no-one remembers.

My Winner: Ronee Blakely

My Nominations: Ronee Blakely. Lily Tomlin. Karen Black. Veronica Cartwright

Only the two Nashville stars make it over and are joined by… another Nashville star! Karen Black gets her second nomination of the year. Cartwright is certainly game in Inserts but this is a year where there aren’t many memorable performances in this category.

My Winner: Ronee Blakely

Let us know your winner in the comments!

Best Supporting Actress – 1974

Official Nominations: Ingrid Bergman. Valentina Cortese. Madeline Kahn. Diane Ladd. Talie Shire.

Few arguments this time with the nominations, the obvious choice to drop though being Valentina Cortese for the now little known Truffaut classic Day For Night. Diane Ladd follows Burstyn’s lead in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – being essentially a road movie, there are any number of notable supporting performances, but they are all fairly small, yet each stands out in its own way, a testament to the quality of the cast and the director. Madeline Kahn featured in both of the Mel Brooks hits this year, but it’s Blazing Saddles where she got a deserving nomination, while Talia Shire further bolsters the foundations laid out previously as Connie Corleone tries to grow out of the shadow of her family. Finally, Ingrid Bergman picked up her third Oscar for Murder On The Orient Express, a performance which is almost entirely focused on a single scene, but it’s one which will stay in the viewer’s mind.

My Winner: Talia Shire

My Nominations: Ingrid Bergman. Madeline Kahn. Diane Ladd. Talie Shire. Valerie Curtin. Margot Kidder.

I only add two further nominations to the four carried over – Valerie Curtin as the shy counterpoint to Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Margot Kidder for her… well, I don’t want to spoil Black Christmas now, do I?

My Winner: Talia Shire