Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
The 2024 recipient: Kieran Culkin
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	1937
Currently held by	Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (2025)

The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor is a special prize given out every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). This award celebrates an actor who has given an amazing performance in a smaller, but still very important, role in a movie.

The award has been given out since the 9th Academy Awards in 1937. For many years, the person who won Best Supporting Actress the year before would present this award. Now, it's often given by a past Best Supporting Actor winner. In the early days, winners received a plaque instead of the famous Oscar statuette. But since the 16th Academy Awards, everyone gets the golden statuette!

So far, 80 different actors have won this award 89 times. The very first winner was Walter Brennan for his part in Come and Get It. The most recent winner is Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain.

The record for winning the most Best Supporting Actor awards is held by Walter Brennan, who won three times! Seven other actors have won twice. Walter Brennan also shares the record for the most nominations in this category, with four nominations. Other actors with four nominations include Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Claude Rains, and Mark Ruffalo.

How Actors Get Nominated

Actors who are nominated for this award are chosen by other actors who are members of AMPAS. This is done through a special voting system. Then, all eligible voting members of the Academy (people from the film industry) vote to pick the winner.

When the awards first started, actors were nominated for all their work in a year, not just one movie. But for the 4th Academy Awards, a new system began. Actors were nominated for a specific role in a single film. At the same time, the Academy decided that there could only be a maximum of five nominations in each acting category every year.

Walter Brennan was the inaugural winner, thrice over, for: Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938), & The Westerner (1940).

Joseph Schildkraut won for The Life of Émile Zola (1937).

Thomas Mitchell won for Stagecoach (1939); first male to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting".

Donald Crisp won for How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Van Heflin won for Johnny Eager (1942).

Charles Coburn won for The More the Merrier (1943).

Barry Fitzgerald won for Going My Way (1944); only actor nommed in both lead + supporting for the same performance.

James Dunn won for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945).

Harold Russell won for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); w/ an Honorary bonus, became only person to earn two Oscars for the same role.

Edmund Gwenn won for Miracle on 34th Street (1947).

Walter Huston won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Dean Jagger won for Twelve O'Clock High (1949).

George Sanders won for All About Eve (1950).

Karl Malden won for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Anthony Quinn won twice, for Viva Zapata! (1952) & Lust for Life (1956); first latino to win in this category.

Frank Sinatra won for From Here to Eternity (1953).

Edmond O'Brien won for The Barefoot Contessa (1954).

Jack Lemmon won for Mister Roberts (1955).

Red Buttons won for Sayonara (1957).

Burl Ives won for The Big Country (1958).

Hugh Griffith won for Ben-Hur (1959).

Peter Ustinov won twice, for Spartacus (1960) & Topkapi (1964).

George Chakiris won for West Side Story (1961).

Ed Begley Sr. won for Sweet Bird of Youth (1962).

Melvyn Douglas won twice, for Hud (1963) & Being There (1979).

Martin Balsam won for A Thousand Clowns (1965).

Walter Matthau won for The Fortune Cookie (1966).

George Kennedy won for Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Jack Albertson won for The Subject Was Roses (1968).

Gig Young won for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969).

John Mills won for Ryan's Daughter (1970); first winner using BSL.

Ben Johnson won for The Last Picture Show (1971); this category's shortest winning performance, at 9m54s.

Joel Grey won for Cabaret (1972).

John Houseman won for The Paper Chase (1973).

Robert De Niro won for The Godfather Part II (1974); first non-English dialogue role (Italian) in this category to win.

George Burns won for The Sunshine Boys (1975).

Jason Robards Jr. won twice consecutively—for All the President's Men (1976) & Julia (1977).

Christopher Walken won for The Deer Hunter (1978).

Timothy Hutton won for Ordinary People (1980); this category's youngest winner, at age 20.

John Gielgud won for Arthur (1981); first out LGBTQ+ winner in this category.

Louis Gossett Jr. won for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982); first black winner for this category.

Jack Nicholson won for Terms of Endearment (1983).

Haing S. Ngor won for The Killing Fields (1984); first Asian to win in the category.

Don Ameche won for Cocoon (1985).

Michael Caine won twice, for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) & The Cider House Rules (1999).

Sean Connery won for The Untouchables (1987).

Kevin Kline won for A Fish Called Wanda (1988).

Denzel Washington won for Glory (1989).

Joe Pesci won for GoodFellas (1990).

Jack Palance won for City Slickers (1991).

Gene Hackman won for Unforgiven (1992).

Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive (1993).

Martin Landau won for Ed Wood (1994).

Kevin Spacey won for The Usual Suspects (1995).

Cuba Gooding Jr. won for Jerry Maguire (1996).

Robin Williams won for Good Will Hunting (1997).

James Coburn won for Affliction (1997).

Benicio del Toro won for Traffic (2000); first Spanish-language performance to win.

Jim Broadbent won for Iris (2001).

Chris Cooper won for Adaptation. (2002).

Tim Robbins won for Mystic River (2003).

Morgan Freeman won for Million Dollar Baby (2004).

George Clooney won for Syriana (2005).

Alan Arkin won for Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

Javier Bardem won for No Country for Old Men (2007).

Heath Ledger won for The Dark Knight (2008); category's first posthumous win, + the first ever for a comic book role.

Christoph Waltz won twice, for Inglourious Basterds (2009) & Django Unchained (2012).

Christian Bale won for The Fighter (2010).

Christopher Plummer won for Beginners (2011); this category's oldest winner, at age 82.

Jared Leto won for Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

J. K. Simmons won for Whiplash (2014).

Mark Rylance won for Bridge of Spies (2015).

Mahershala Ali won twice, for Moonlight (2016) & Green Book (2018).

Sam Rockwell won for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).

Brad Pitt won for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

Daniel Kaluuya won for Judas and the Black Messiah (2021).

Troy Kotsur won for CODA (2021); first deaf male win.

Ke Huy Quan won for Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Winners and Nominees by Year

The years listed below are when the films were released. The actual Academy Awards ceremonies usually happen the following year.

1930s Winners

1940s Winners

2000s Winners

2010s Winners

2020s Winners

Actors with Multiple Wins

Some actors have won the Best Supporting Actor award more than once!

Actors with Multiple Nominations

These actors have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor three or more times.

Age Records for Winners and Nominees

Here are some interesting facts about the ages of actors who have won or been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Films with More Than One Supporting Actor Nomination

Sometimes, more than one actor from the same movie gets nominated for Best Supporting Actor. This has happened 22 times! Most of these films had two nominations. However, On the Waterfront (1954), The Godfather (1972), and The Godfather Part II (1974) each had three nominations.

The winners are shown in bold.

• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) -- Harry Carey Sr. and Claude Rains
• Quo Vadis (1951) -- Leo Genn and Peter Ustinov
• Shane (1953) -- Brandon deWilde and Jack Palance
• On the Waterfront (1954) -- Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger
• Peyton Place (1957) -- Arthur Kennedy and Russ Tamblyn
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959)-- Arthur O'Connell and George C. Scott
• The Hustler (1961) -- Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott
• Bonnie and Clyde (1967) -- Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard
• The Last Picture Show (1971) -- Jeff Bridges and Ben Johnson
• The Godfather (1972) -- James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Al Pacino
• The Godfather Part II (1974) -- Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo, and Lee Strasberg
• Rocky (1976) -- Burgess Meredith and Burt Young
• Julia (1977) -- Jason Robards and Maximilian Schell
• Ordinary People (1980) -- Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton
• Terms of Endearment (1983) -- John Lithgow and Jack Nicholson
• Platoon (1986) -- Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe
• Bugsy (1991) -- Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) -- Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell
• The Irishman (2019) -- Al Pacino and Joe Pesci
• Judas and the Black Messiah (2020) -- Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield
• The Power of the Dog (2021) -- Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee
• The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) -- Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan

Same Character, Different Nominations

It's very rare, but sometimes the same character in different movies can lead to two nominations for different actors. This has only happened once for Best Supporting Actor:

• Max "Pop" Corkle from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (James Gleason, 1941) and Heaven Can Wait (Jack Warden, 1978)

Related pages

• BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Óscar al mejor actor de reparto para niños

• BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress