Best Supporting Actor Rankings 1993-2017

Article by Paul Douglas Moomjean

Best Supporting Actor is a very rich category that sees a drop off as we hit the bottom ranked films. My theory is a lot of the lesser performances were awarded for their body of work or star status.

Yet the top ten are easily masterpiece performances, with Christoph Waltz being the real MVP, winning for 2009 and 2012.

So here are my rankings for the best Best Supporting Actor from 1993-2017

1. 1997: Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting)
No other actor on this list was as beloved as Williams. Few comedians turned in award-worthy performances as often as him, but his turn as the community college psychologist who breaks through to Matt Damon is so beautifully touching and uncynical, you can’t help but fall in love with Williams again.

2. 2009: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Quentin Tarantino said when he wrote this part he thought he’d never find an actor to play the evil Nazi tracking down Jewish family members. Waltz was a revelation from start to finish.

3. 2008: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Winning the award after is death, Ledger’s performance was the best of its kind since Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs.

4. 2007: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
The Coen Brothers created a survivalist that felt like Hannibal Lecter meets T-1000. Bardem brought sheer terror to the screen.

5. 1995: Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects)
When his limp turned into a straightforward walk at the end, he stamped his place on Oscar history.

6. 2014: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)
I was a teacher and coach for years, and I can tell you, this performance is really how many coaches broke their athletes. An amazingly focused turn.

7. 2012: Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
With this turn, Waltz not only proved his earlier win wasn’t a fluke, but that he understood Tarantino speak as well as Samuel L. Jackson.

8. 2004: Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby)
Yes, he should have won for The Shawshank Redemption, but his work here as the ex-boxer turned maintenance worker was the heart of Eastwood’s masterpiece.

9. 2016: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
When I saw Moonlight, I thought if Ali doesn’t win the Oscar, then the award should be retired.

10. 2015: Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)
He delivered every Coen Brothers line perfectly, and hard to believe Rylance is the first acting win for a Steven Spielberg film.

11. 2011: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
If you looked up charming in the dictionary, this performance would be the picture next to it.

12. 1993: Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive)
If you wanna know how good he was, his character has been spoofed for years since.

13. 2002: Chris Cooper (Adaptation)
To go head to head with Meryl Streep is hard, but to steal every scene is even harder. Cooper does it the whole film.

14. 2010: Christian Bale (The Fighter)
I was not a fan of the film, but this is a wildly free performance in David O. Russel’s boxing film.

15. 2000: Benicio Del Toro (Traffic)
He stole the show in a film that had a great ensemble and script.

16. 2017: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
His character arc was fantastically well played, and his win was long overdue after years of being ignored.

17. 2006: Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine)
He played an old man yelling. But what an old man yelling he was.

18. 1996: Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire)
He never capitalized off this win in getting better roles, but you can’t deny his likability and famous Oscar speech.

19. 1999: Michael Caine (Cider House Rules)
He’s a much better actor than this performance, and he stole the win from other newbies like Haley Joel Osment and Michael Clarke Duncan.

20. 2003: Tim Robbins (Mystic River)
A great actor, yes. But another over the top performance in Clint Eastwood’s dark tale.