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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The New Oscar Actress Hierarchy - Glenn & Frances Rising

by Nathaniel R 

We thought it would be fun to revise the Oscar Acting Hierarchy we last shared when Julianne Moore FINALLY won an Oscar six years back. What follows is a List of Oscar's 36 All Time Favorite Actresses... (you can see the corresponding actor list here) restricted to women with 5 or more nominations (though 4 nominations will get you in the list if you've won twice). Only the acting statistics are accounted for so Emma Thompson, for example, is not ranked. If you included her screenplay win she would have made the list. If you counted non-acting nominations, you'd also see Shirley Maclaine jump a rank as she was nominated for documentary once. Now that virtually every major star is also a producer these types of extra stats will only get murkier so we're opting not to include them and focusing only on what the Academy thinks of them as actors.

🔺 = the actress has moved up the chart or strengthened her placement since the last publication of this list (in February 2015). An explanation of how the rank was determined is at the end of the post. 

OSCAR'S HOLY TRINITY 
And 33 More Royals 

 

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Razzie Nominations: Music, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Hillbilly Elegy, etcetera

by Nathaniel R

We don't want to waste too much time on this but figured we share the nominees for the 41st annual Razzies. The Razzies dont often have much in common with the general awards season and usually go for easy marks rather than thinking about what actually constitutes bad acting or bad filmmaking. But this year there's a little more crossover since the savagely reviewed Sia musical Music as well as two Oscar contenders in various categories, the  overwrought Hillbilly Elegy and the critical and zeitgeist hit Borat Subsequent Moviefilm are both up for prizes... 

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Oscar race: Supporting Actress Chaos & Supporting Actor Lock-up

by Nathaniel R

don't despair ladies, you're the only two locks in "Best Supporting Actress"

We saw a tweet yesterday that implied that the Oscar race for Best Supporting Actress is now between Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy) and Jodie Foster (The Mauritanian) which felt a bit insane to us. That's a Globe induced fever. Nevertheless the shock of Foster's win for a movie people have barely noticed does maybe tell us that the Supporting Actress competition is more fluid than assumed. So who is leading and who is going to be left out on the 15th when the nominations are announced? The way we see it there are 9 women left standing for various reasons (which is a lot going into voting since it's usually only 6 or 7 by now). Only two of them (Glenn Close and Olivia Colman) feel locked up for honors. Curiously despite the sure-thing feel of Colman's soon to be second nomination, it's unlikely she has ANY shot at a win. Her Oscar win is very recent and The Father isn't quite the contender it should be (qualitatively speaking) given its quiet campaign. But the nomination battle is always different than the battle to win.

Who gets the other three spots?

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Showbiz History: Madonna at the Grammys, Judy at the Globes, Tilda at the Oscars

7 random things that happened on this day, February 24th, in showbiz history...

Judy and Marlon seated together at the Globes; They both won that night.

1955 The 12th annual Golden Globes are held honoring 1954 cinema. On the Waterfront (Drama) and Carmen Jones (Comedy/Musical) took the Best Picture prizes. Both James Mason and Judy Garland (neither of whom ever won a competitive Oscar) of A Star is Born won Globes for their leading work in the Comedy/Musical fields but the fact that the picture lost (when it's a hundred times the film Carmen Jones is) was an ill omen of what would happen later at the Oscars... 

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