Best Supporting Actress Oscar Wins Of The 2010S Ranked

In 1940, Hattie McDaniel won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in 1939’s Gone With the Wind. It was a historic win not just for the film industry, but for the civil rights movement in the United States, with McDaniel being the first Black person to be recognized for her acting achievements by the Academy. Although this victory was marred by controversy due to segregation laws, which meant she was forced to accept her award in a separate hotel from her white counterparts, McDaniel’s win was a catalyst for greater acceptance of Black talent, and a major coup for the fight against the Draconian laws that facilitated racial inequality.

Through the pioneering endeavors of Hattie McDaniel and the like, between 2010 and 2020, four of the 10 winners of the same award were Black. While the Academy has regularly been called into question over its alleged racial bias, highlighted by the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, the recent winners of the Best Supporting Actress are suggestive of progress. Although there is undoubtedly still work to be done and strides to be made in the quest for racial equality, the preceding decade was a symbol of advancement. Let’s take a look at the best performances and films to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress wins of the 2010s…

5 Viola Davis – Fences

     Paramount Pictures  

2016’s drama Fences, directed by and starring Denzel Washington, follows the story of an overbearing father who is haunted by his own shortfalls and perceived sporting failures, and takes his life’s frustrations out on his son. Viola Davis is so very warm in her showing as Troy’s wife, Rose, a woman conflicted by her husband’s infidelity, her son’s disability, and the fractious relationships she has to live with.

4 Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk

     Mirror Releasing  

Based on James Baldwin’s novel of the same name, Barry Jenkins’ screen adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk concerns the romantic yet tragic tale of Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James). When Fonny finds himself falsely accused of rape by a racially prejudiced and corrupt police officer, which subsequently leads to an unjust conviction, a pregnant Tish must fight to prove his innocence.

Regina King is Tish’s strong and proud mother, Sharon, whose diplomacy and methodical logic is the film’s powerful voice of reason. King’s is a masterful performance that is astute, poignant, and motherly in equal measure.

3 Allison Janney – I, Tonya

     30 WestNeon  

It was only last year that Will Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock, before claiming the Academy Award for Best Actor for his rendition of Richard Williams in Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard. He played the coercive, domineering, and cold-hearted father of the Williams sisters, yet it was just four years prior that the Academy recognized Allison Janney for her role as LaVona Golden, a coercive, domineering, and cold-hearted mother in Craig Gillsepie’s I, Tonya.

Unlike Smith, she refrained from slapping the host when claiming her award, but the similarities in the way in which her character’s relentless pursuit of sporting success while living vicariously through her child is certainly comparable to Smith’s in King Richard. The chain-smoking, heavily bespectacled, pushy mother who totally disregards her daughter’s need for love, affection, and that maternal bond is captured perfectly by Janney, who seems so effortless in her delivery.

2 Octavia Spencer – The Help

     Walt Disney Studios  

The 1960s civil rights movement was one of the biggest pushes for public, governmental, and societal reform ever witnessed in America and the world. Set against the backdrop of Jackson, Mississippi, The Help documents aspiring white journalist Skeeter’s (Emma Stone) expose on the working conditions for the Black maids of the country, and the racial prejudice they encounter on a day-to-day basis.

Nicknamed “The Help” by their white employers, Octavia Spencer plays Minny, a maid and key contributor to Skeeter’s book, vocalizing her struggles after having been ostracized by her former employer. Minny’s tenacity, inner strength, and resilience to speak out in the face of adversity are translated so brilliantly via Spencer. Celia (Jessica Chastain) and Minny’s friendship is the film’s token of dismantled prejudice and the power of innate empathy.

1 Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave

     Fox Searchlight Pictures  

While the decade was irrefutably competitive in the Best Supporting Actress category, it simply wasn’t fierce enough to dethrone Lupita Nyong’o’s performance in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. In her feature-length debut, Nyong’o’s display was a moving, benevolent, and tender-hearted depiction of a woman merely trying to survive the cruel wrath of her slavers in 1840s Louisiana. Prior to the controversial 13th amendment and the abolition of the American slave trade, 12 Years a Slave follows freeman, Solomon Northup (a great Chiwetel Ejiofor), as he is kidnaped and sold into slavery.

Nyong’o plays Patsey, an enslaved young woman, who suffers violence, frequent lashings, and rape at the hands of the malevolent slaver and plantation owner, Edwin Epps (played so devilishly by a menacing Michael Fassbender). 12 Years a Slave is a harrowing, deeply evocative picture of the depravity of the slave trade, and Lupita Nyong’o’s delivery as a desperately exploited woman is quite breathtaking.