History
Throughout the past 75 years AMPAS has presented a total of 75 Best Supporting Actor awards to 68 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 Christian Bale, who was honored at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony (2011) for his performance in The Fighter.
Until the 8th Academy Awards ceremony (1935), nominations for the Best Actor award were intended to include all actors, whether the performance was in a leading or supporting role. At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony (1936), however, the Best Supporting Actor category was specifically introduced as a distinct award following complaints that the single Best Actor category necessarily favored leading performers with the most screen time. Nonetheless, Lionel Barrymore had received a Best Actor award (A Free Soul, 1931) and Franchot Tone a Best Actor nomination (Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935) for their performances in clear supporting roles. 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. Currently, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role constitute the four Academy Awards of Merit for acting annually presented by AMPAS.
Superlatives
Superlative Best Actor Best Supporting Actor Overall
Actor with most awards Spencer Tracy
Fredric March
Gary Cooper
Marlon Brando
Dustin Hoffman
Tom Hanks
Jack Nicholson
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sean Penn 2 Walter Brennan 3 Walter Brennan
Jack Nicholson 3
Actor with most nominations Spencer Tracy
Laurence Olivier 9 Walter Brennan
Claude Rains
Arthur Kennedy
Jack Nicholson 4 Jack Nicholson 12
Actor with most nominations
(without ever winning) Peter O'Toole 8 Claude Rains
Arthur Kennedy 4 Peter O'Toole 8
Film with most nominations Mutiny on the Bounty 3 On the Waterfront
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II 3 On the Waterfront
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II 4
Oldest winner Henry Fonda 76 George Burns 80 George Burns 80
Oldest nominee Richard Farnsworth 79 Hal Holbrook 82 Hal Holbrook 82
Youngest winner Adrien Brody 29 Timothy Hutton 20 Timothy Hutton 20
Youngest nominee Jackie Cooper 9 Justin Henry 8 Justin Henry 8
Walter Brennan, the winner of the inaugural award in 1936, is the only actor to win the award three times (from four nominations). Five actors have won the award twice: Anthony Quinn, Melvyn Douglas, Michael Caine, Peter Ustinov, and Jason Robards. Robards was the only person to win consecutive Best Supporting Actor awards, for All the President's Men (1976) and Julia (1977).
Four African-American actors have won the award: Louis Gossett, Jr., Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Morgan Freeman.
Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy share the greatest number of unsuccessful nominations, four each. The only other actors with four nominations were Walter Brennan (won three times) and Jack Nicholson (won once). Charles Bickford, Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, and Al Pacino have each had three unsuccessful nominations. Though Bridges, Duvall and Pacino all have won a Oscar for lead actor.
Harold Russell was the first (and only) actor to receive two Academy Awards for the same performance when he won the Best Supporting Actor award and was also presented with an Academy Honorary Award for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Thanks to a voting quirk, 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, Academy bylaws preclude this from happening.)
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 foreign-language performances in this category.
Although five actresses have been nominated for non-speaking supporting roles, John Mills was the only male actor to be so nominated. Mills won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a mute brain-damaged village idiot in Ryan's Daughter (1970). (This excludes actors who were nominated for Best Actor for silent films in the silent era.)
Heath Ledger is the only person to posthumously win an acting Oscar in a supporting role. He won the Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, 2008. He is only the second person to posthumously win any acting Oscar (the other was Peter Finch, who won Best Actor for Network, 1976), and the first to win from a posthumous acting nomination (Finch was alive when his nomination was announced). Ledger was the fourth actor to be nominated for the portrayal of a comic strip/comic book/graphic novel character (the others being Al Pacino in Dick Tracy, Paul Newman in Road to Perdition, and William Hurt in A History of Violence), and the first to win.
The earliest nominees in this category who are still alive are Don Murray and Mickey Rooney (1956), and the earliest winner in this category who is still alive is George Chakiris (1961).
The earliest year where all 5 Supporting Actor nominations are still alive is the 56th Academy Awards, while the most recent where all 5 have died is at the 37th Academy Awards,
As of 2011 the earliest Oscars where all 4 acting winners are alive is the 34th Academy Awards, while the most recent where all 4 have died is the 54th Academy Awards.
All about: Cinema of the United States, Hollywood, AMPAS, Academy Awards
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