Top 11 Best Supporting Actor Oscar Winning Performances

By CJ Tiernan

There is an inherent desire, lurking in every performer, to be a star. We are drawn to the center of the spotlight, to shine brighter than anyone else, to stand out. It takes a great deal of grace (or a series of failures) to willingly step aside and yield the floor to someone else. But making a movie, as with most victories, is a team game. It takes all parties pulling the rope in the same direction to be successful. Sometimes, those supporting players do their job so well they can’t help but steal back some of that spotlight. This list is an ode to the scene stealers. Below is my list of the Top 11 Greatest Performances to Win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (in movies that I’ve seen). Enjoy!

1. Christoph Waltz - Hans Landa - Inglorious Basterds (2009)

The opening scene of Inglorious Basterds seeps through the floorboards of your very being and chills you to your very core. It is wrought with tension and Christoph Waltz fosters a performance so riveting that it leaves you almost unable to blink. He is evil incarnate. Waltz was perfectly built for the role (not that he is evil, he just actually speaks several languages relevant to the role) and manages to be sinister while smiling. Nothing is more intimidating than being sinister while smiling.

2. Heath Ledger - The Joker - The Dark Knight (2008)

The Joker is often considered (rightly so) the greatest comic book villain of all time. In fact, before Heath Ledger slipped into the purple and green, the performance of Jack Nicholson was considered the pinnacle of the role, an unreachable zenith. Ledger went for it and shattered that ceiling. While known as the Clown Prince of Crime, this Christopher Nolan version played down the clown (minus the makeup) and played up the crime. He is an unbridled agent of chaos, sowing seeds of doubt into Gotham City by punching holes in its heroes (both masked and unmasked). The Joker is such a wonderful bad guy and, at least for now, Heath Ledger stands atop the mountain as the greatest performance (although the evil laugh of Mark Hamill has not yet been topped).

3. J.K. Simmons - Terence Fletcher - Whiplash (2014)

How bad do you want to be great? What are you willing to endure to reach the top of your field? These are questions faced by the many students of Terence Fletcher, as he is an unflinchingly intense music instructor. He throws things, he shouts and berates the kids in his class (college kids, that is), and he demands greatness. He meets his match when Miles Teller strolls into class and says “I want to be great” or something like that. They go back and forth throughout the entire movie, each getting in their barbs and jabs, until the movie crescendos in a glorious finale. I wouldn’t want him as a teacher but, then again, I’m not out here striving for greatness. A ‘B’ is fine, it’s a passing grade.

4. Javier Bardem - Anton Chigurh - No Country for Old Men (2007)

Angela George, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This is the fourth entry on my list, and is the third or fourth villain on the list (depending on your stance of J.K. Simmons as a villain in Whiplash). Playing the bad guy is a winning proposition for an actor(although they almost always lose in the movie), allowing a lot of room to play. There is a level of malice and bone-chilling fear perpetrated by Javier Bardem in this performance that sticks with you. He is but a man, and yet he lacks humanity. Horror movies often opt for a supernatural element or monster as their villainous presence. Making that evil presence a man instead, is somehow so much worse. The Coen Brothers do pull their punch a little, though, by giving him the same hair style as Vogue head-honcho Anna Wintour.

5. Robin Williams - Sean Maguire - Good Will Hunting (1997)

Robin Williams is, in contrast to the last guy, brimming with humanity. While most well-known for his effervescent, non-stop energy and comedic performances, he was an incredible actor with a tenderness that’s hard to match. His character went head-to-head with a genius in this one and ultimately won out because of his honesty and open heart. This movie also won the Oscar for writing (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, if you can believe it) and yet some of the most memorable moments and lines in the movie are Williams’ improv. He had such distinct characters, that sometimes I like to imagine transposing one of his characters into another one of his movies. Imagine if Will Hunting’s therapist was Mrs. Doubtfire, or the Genie hosted morning radio in Vietnam, or Popeye sat down to dinner in The Birdcage.

6. Mahershala Ali - Juan - Moonlight (2016)

Ali is only in the first act of the movie and yet his performance echoes throughout. He is as magnetic as a personality can possibly be and becomes a surrogate father to the protagonist. As a drug dealer, we have certain expectations of who and what he is, and yet he shatters almost every single one of them. He is kind and easy-going and takes the main character (going by “Little”) under his wing and provides for him in a way that his own mother is incapable of. It is such an unexpected and heartening relationship and my favorite part of the whole movie. Mahershala may be a difficult name to read (c’mon, it’s spelled how it sounds) but his performance is anything but.

7. Brad Pitt - Cliff Booth - Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Brad Pitt has, in a word, charisma. He has an effortless charm that seemingly oozes out of every pore (but not in a gross way, which is what one normally associates with ooze). Leonardo DiCaprio (famously a great actor) plays an actor (great range!) to whom Brad Pitt is the stuntman. Putting Pitt on this lower tier is instantly an entertaining premise, but my goodness does he deliver. There are themes of aging in Hollywood (which is an interestingly self-aware topic for both DiCaprio and Pitt to take on) and friendship enduring changes, but the pièce de resistance is the ending. I won’t spoil it for those of you slackers out there but the alternate reality that the fictional characters enter with the historical figures is…wow.

8. Ke Huy Quan - Waymond Wang - Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Part relationship drama, part multiverse epic, Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the wilder, most genre-bending movies I’ve ever seen. You can see why it won best picture. It contains multitudes, but manages to land the plane in less time than your average Marvel movie. Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis also deservingly won for their roles in this movie, but Ke Huy Quan has one of the more fascinating journeys here. He did very little acting between his childhood roles in the mid-80s in Temple of Doom and The Goonies and this movie and absolutely no acting between 2002 and 2021. Then, he came back with a flourish in this movie to become an absolute scene-stealer. While multiverse theory can make your head spin (and grant you hot dog fingers) and leave you with FOMO, it still seems less complicated than cancelling your cable bill.

9. Kevin Kline - Otto - A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

 

Kevin Kline is American. That alone is not worthy of a prize (outside the grounds of the White House, anyway) but it is surprising because he always seems to carry himself with an upright regality becoming of a Brit. He has the debonair bona fides of a James Bond portrayer and yet he hails from the Show Me State. In this movie, he plays one of a small cast of crooks in a heist full of double-crosses. His demeanor once again begins stoic and upright, but little by little, develops cracks along the way. It is a fascinating descent played expertly for comedy. I love a crime comedy, but they don’t get enough love critically. It is nice to see recognition for a comic actor in a comedy. RDJ and Robin Williams, perhaps most associated in their careers for comedy, both made this list but had to venture into another genre to earn their statues. Also impressive for a film written by a member of Monty Python, and staring two of its members, to have a non-Python stand out comedically. And now for something completely different…

10. Robert Downey Jr. - Lewis Strauss - Oppenheimer (2023)

Oppenheimer was long and (sometimes) in black and white. That is two strikes on my arbitrary movie-components scoreboard. However, Robert Downey Jr., and the scenes he was in, were the best part of the movie. I found a lot of the movie to be unnecessary (they completely wasted Florence Pugh and why the heck is Josh Peck here?) but the scenes at the end with RDJ were riveting and I don’t understand why they took so long to get there. If Barbenheimer was a contest, Barbie won in a landslide victory. Robert Downey Jr. was absolutely made to be Iron Man. He is a perfect fit and it’s a match made in heaven, but he is an incredible actor that has shown time and again he has range. This was his third nomination, as he was nominated in ’08 for Tropic Thunder and ’93 for playing Charlie Chaplin. He has now played a real person three times: Charlie Chaplin (nominated), Lewis Strauss (won), and Paul Avery (his role in Zodiac – my favorite of his movies). I think we need more of this from him. He has the fierce gravitas to take on any and all roles. Yes, he is Iron Man. He’s also gonna be whoever else you cast him as.

11. Chris Cooper - John Laroche - Adaptation (2002)

When Nic Cage and Spike Jonze team up and do a Charlie Kaufman (and Donald Kaufman) movie, you know you’re heading deep into the bonkers jungle. The guy that wrote the movie created a movie about writing a movie with himself and his own fictional twin brother as the main characters. It is such a great flick. Chris Cooper plays a fictional character in the story within the story. I don’t want to give anything away if you haven’t seen it (or maybe because it’s so confusing, I just don’t want to have to explain it), but you gotta see it. Chris Cooper, who was on a bit of a run at this point in his career (October Sky and American Beauty in ’99, The Patriot in 2000, The Bourne Identity and Adaptation in ’02, Seabiscuit in ‘03), has never been better (or worse, really. He’s just always great).

Final Thoughts

Some of these actors are leading men who took supporting roles and knocked them out of the park. Others are simply experts in the craft of character acting and their labors bore fruit. Whatever the case may be, they are all deserving of the Award(s) bestowed upon them and the movies are all well worth your time. If I left any of your favorites off the list (I know I tend to skew more toward the present and leave the past behind), please let me know in the comments. Thanks! Have a great day!