Greatest Oscar-Winning Performances - Supporting Actress

Of the 78 performances rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, these are the ten best.

Since the Academy Awards began, 78 performances by 76 women have garnered the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. In identifying this ten-best list, there were tough selections to be made. Also-rans include: Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck; Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot; Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls; Mary Steenburgen in Melvin and Howard; Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously; Maureen Stapleton in Reds; Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock. Great performances all, but these are the ten best.

10. Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show, 1971.

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Leachman, famous for her traditionally wacky work on television and in Mel Brooks' features, captures the raw sadness at the heart of Ruth Popper, the loneliest wife in a town full of lonely wives. The actress shows us the vulnerability and despair, sure, but watch for how she steers her final monologue from fury to disbelief to compassion to ultimate acceptance without showing us a single seam. Brilliant.

9. Dianne Wiest, Bullets over Broadway, 1994.

I tried not to include the actress twice on this list, but it was impossible not to. Wiest plays Helen Sinclair fully, as the over-sexed, over-drinking, over-smoking, over-narcissist legend that she is. Allen has created more well-rounded characters and more fully-realized films, but Wiest elevates what could have been hum-drum to must-see.

8. Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951.

In a film with such great acting based on a screenplay with such great parts, a performer can either rise to the material or sink under the weight of it all. Hunter more than meets the challenge presented by Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan; she breathes life into Stella - the lightning rod for sanity and balance – but demands more from that life and those around her than table scraps and apologies.

7. Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the Wind, 1939.

"McDaniel played a type, not a character," some say. Maybe so, but she still did what all great supporting players do; she made the movie better when she was onscreen. Mammy may have been a type on paper, but McDaniel played her as the film's moral compass; she cow-towed to keep the peace, but everyone knew the home of wisdom and wit at Tara was behind those oh-so-open brown eyes.

6. Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker, 1962.

This is how it's done. Lots of work by children and teens has been at least nominated by the Academy over the years, but, some five decades later, Duke's blunt, relentless, haunted Helen Keller is still the yardstick against which all others are measured.

5. Eva Marie Saint, On the Waterfront, 1954.

Saint made her debut playing against Brando in this Best Picture winner. Her masterfully tender, generous take on Edie Doyle not only anchors the film, it provides the sensitive light at the end of a rusting and disheartened tunnel.

4. Dianne Wiest, Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986.

I remember seeing this film and thinking, "Who was that?!?" I was focusing on the then-little known Wiest, who Allen thankfully cast as the most masculine woman he ever constructed. The actress is fresh, unpredictable, funny, needy, provocative and ballsy; she turns Holly into a fully-realized woman who positively vaults off the screen. Wiest's intelligence and heart gave us a character for the ages.

3. Meryl Streep, Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979.

Streep wrote her own courtroom speech and that one scene alone is enough to merit the Oscar, but throughout the film, Meryl imbues Joanna Kramer with a brew of melancholia and hope, of self-righteousness and mother-love so intoxicating, she turns a potential harridan into a woman of profundity, pathos, and power.

2. Sandy Dennis, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966.

Playing crazy and damaged in a film with Burton and Taylor at their peaks also playing crazy and damaged is a challenge few could rise to, yet Dennis turned what could have been a throwaway part into an iconic study of naivety, mania, and alcohol intolerance. She could easily have been #1 on this list, were it not for…

1. Mo'Nique, Precious, 2009.

It is actually difficult to find the words to properly capture what this performance will do to you. In the actress's hands, Mary is mother-monster to Precious; and the final scene – when she is left ultimately with no option other than truth – is pathetic, terrifying, entrancing. This is the sort of performance movie lovers long for and rarely, so rarely, get.