25 Oldest Best Supporting Actress Nominees of all time

by Nathaniel R

Maggie Smith (Gosford Park), Ethel Barrymore (Spiral Staircase) and Rosemary Harris (Tom & Viv)... all just a bit TOO YOUNG for this list!

We recently published an "Oldest Best Actor Nominees of all time" list since TWO men this year (Gary Oldman and Sir Anthony Hopkins) landed in the mix. (Related lists "Youngest Best Actor" and "Youngest Best Actress"). Given that unusual two-for-one accomplishment we figured we needed to update the correlative Oldest Best Supporting Actress list where the exact same thing has happened. We first published this list only three months ago but then the focus was on the possibility that Ellen Burstyn would make history as the oldest nominee ever in that category. But Pieces of a Woman proved polarizing when it "opened" and was ignored outside of Vanessa Kirby's Best Actress bid. 

So an update to the list. Which elder women have been looked at fondly by Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category? Supporting (for both men and women) skews older than Lead since Hollywood prefers midtwenties to mid fortysomethings for protagonists. Herewith the women who broke through the wall of ingenues, girlfriends, wives, and mothers, to score Oscar nominations in Best Supporting Actress category later in life... 

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Kelly & Charisse

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Gay Best Friend: Tim in "Frankie & Johnny" (1991)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope   

Even before officially coming out, Nathan Lane (left) wasn't afraid to play gay in "Frankie and Johnny," pictured here with Kate Nelligan and Al Pacino.Especially in the early days, the inauthenticity of the “Gay Best Friend” trope came from straight actors mincing about to sell the part. The role is able to gain a whole lot of authenticity when a queer person is either writing or acting the part. In the case of Frankie and Johnny, both the writer and performer of the 'gay best friend' were gay, though both were not out. Theater legend (and out gay playwright) Terence McNally adapted his Off-Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune into a movie in 1991. He was able to get A-List talent to take the titular roles for film, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino headlining. However, he also gave Nathan Lane one of his first breakout roles as Tim, the gay best friend and neighbor of Pfeiffer’s Frankie.

The 1991 film did not achieve the level of acclaim that McNally’s play did (thus it was the subject of a great This Had Oscar Buzz episode). Still, there are things to appreciate about this adaptation...

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Links: Irish cacophonies, crowded rooms, and guild prizes

• IndieWire did you see SNL's sketch lampooning Ammonite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire as "Lesbian Period Drama"
• Towleroad Tom Holland to play Billy Milligan the first person to successfully use Dissassociative Identity Disorder as a criminal defense in the series The Crowded Room
• The Guardian asks a very real and interesting question: which films have missed their moment given the pandemic. Lots of films benefit from feeling 'of the moment' and not all of the films coming out in 2021 and 2022 will.

 More after the jump including trouble for film production in Georgia, Bowen Yang's Titanic hilarity, and the Art Directors Guild Awards...

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Thirteen days until the Oscars. Are you counting down? Does this insanely stacked list of presenters move your personal excitement needle? 

P.S. Isn't it weirdly embarrassing for the Academy to use a fake non-Oscar statue in an commercial for their own show? I get that they're protective of the statue as a copyright / trademark but this is a commercial for their own show. Why is the "awards show" statue some weird not-the-real-thing cross between an Emmy and an Oscar?