Number 12: Tatum O’Neal as Addie Loggins in "Paper Moon" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

It seems to be a well-known fact that Tatum O’Neal’s performance is the result of clever directing and shooting scenes up to 70 times until she got it right. But as I already mentioned in my review for Anna Paquin, it’s the result that matters. And the result is one of the funniest, most original and captivating performances ever to hit the screen.

Another aspect that won’t be considered here it the obvious category fraud – Tatum O’Neal is in 99% of the movie her being in the supporting category would be like putting Vivien Leigh in the supporting category for Gone with the Wind. But I only want to judge the performance itself and because of that I don’t want to care about the placement. 

I could be very easy to dismiss Tatum O’Neal’s work – just like Helen Hayes in Airport gets most laughs out of the fact that she is a little old lady acting so – unlike a little old day, Tatum O’Neal gets a lot of laughs by acting like an adult when she is only a little girl. But Tatum O’Neal certainly does much more – she does not act like an adult but she plays precisely what Addie is, a little girl who is wise beyond her years and knows how to play the games better than the grown-ups do. She isn’t given any of that ‘precious’ dialogue that so many juvenile characters get these days but instead talks like a little girl is supposed to talk, only always with her own hidden agenda. And all this makes her performance a perfectly entertaining combination of her personality and her acting.

Tatum O’Neal’s chemistry with her father is excellent and their constant arguments in the car are comedic gold. But so many other scenes are fantastic, too – Tatum O’Neal created such a little ‘brat’ that every time she acts cute or cries for the purpose of another fraud, she is absolutely delightful. And her scenes in the hotel are maybe the best. When she wants to trick that guy into going up to Miss Trixie’s room and she tells him ‘You won’t be sorry’ with a you-know-what-I-mean-look.

It’s an incredible grown-up performance, Addie is a real three-dimensional person, particularly at the end when Moses brings her to her aunt and Tatum O’Neal’s perfectly shows how much she is going to miss him.

Overall, it’s certainly one of the most original performances and characters this category has to offer.

Number 13: Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore in "A Passage to India" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

I strongly believe that Peggy Ashcroft is the only winner of the Supporting Oscar who also would have been an easy winner in the leading category – she won several awards in the leading category and hers was undoubtedly the most celebrated female performance of 1984. Combine this with an extremely weak field in the Best Actress category which allowed Sally Field to win a second Oscar in 5 years and I am pretty sure that Peggy Ashcroft would have been triumphant. But anyway, the Academy honored her in the Supporting category and personally, I agree with this placement since Judy Davis is the clear lead in David Lean’s A Passage to India with Peggy Ashcroft offering splendid support as the wise and generous Mrs. Moore who travels to India with her future daughter-in-law to visit her son and witnesses prejudices and the negative effects of British superiority.  

Like a lot of other British winners in this category (Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench), Peggy Ashcroft is able to light up the screen whenever she appears and tell a lot about her character with just a small look or gesture. Her Mrs. Moore is the only voice of sanity in A Passage to India, she full of tolerance, has no prejudices and, as she tells other British visitors, would like ‘to come across some of the Indians socially. As friends.’ The character of Mrs. Moore could easily have been turned into a saint, but Peggy Ashcroft wisely avoids making her saint-like and instead simply turns her into an old and wise woman who uses her experiences to lead the life she thinks is best.

Peggy Ashcroft shines in the scene when she first meets the Indian doctor in a mosque in the middle of the night. He tells her ‘You have no rights here. You should have taken off your shoes!’ and she answers ‘But I have taken off my shoes. I left them outside.’ Dr. Aziz is surprised because most English ladies never take off her shoes, especially when they think no one is there to see. Mrs. Moore simply says ‘God is here.’ Later, she is a guest at a party where the Indians are again treated like dirt by the English hosts. Full of rage, she says to her son ‘This is one of the most unnatural affairs I have ever attended!’ Peggy Ashcroft remains completely natural during her entire performance, never trying to gain the audience’s sympathy by playing a ‘nice, little old lady’ but instead crafts an intelligent character who becomes the center of the whole story.

Peggy Ashcroft’s most impressive scenes are when she and Adela visit some caves and Mrs. Moore gets frightened and runs outsight, scared and shaking by the echo and the darkness. Later, she tells Adela with a shaking voice ‘I think like many old people I sometimes think we are merely passing figures in a godless universe.’ In this scene, she shows that Mrs. Moore is already realizing that life will not go on forever and that death is starting to look more and more realistic. The way she looked at a tombstone earlier or grabs her chest with a look of pain later strengthens these impressions.

As mentioned before, Peggy Ashcroft can tell the whole life of her character with just a small look. When she talks about her second husband, who, in her own words, was very unconventional, Peggy Ashcrofts lets the whole past of Mrs. Moore come alive in just a few seconds. There is no need to tell about her past but everything is so easy to imagine.

Overall, a wonderful performance that shows that great acting knows no age.

Number 14: Vanessa Redgrave as Julia in "Julia" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

What is it about Vanessa Redgrave that makes her such a fascinating actress to watch? I don’t know but she simply has that certain ‘something extra’. And in Julia, she is able to build one of the most complete and complex characters ever to hit the screen with just a few moments of screen time. Vanessa Redgrave is also a first-class example for a supporting role. She is essential to the movie (it’s named after her!), she has little screen-time but shines in every single second of it and her presence can be felt throughout the entire film. Everything in it is happening because of her, for her or with her. Jane Fonda may be the one who carries Julia but Vanessa Redgrave is the one who creates it.

Vanessa Redgrave is one of those actresses who lights up the screen simply with one look. She gives so much energy, mystery and life, so much intelligence and grace is constantly shining inside her. In only a few scenes at the beginning she already establishes the whole character of Julia. She is a fighter, a strong, intelligent woman (excepted at Oxford) and a great friend to Lilly. In one second she can show more passion and determination for her cause than others in 2 hours. When Lilly says that there is a time when every woman reaches a perfect age and that it had happened to Julia, you believe her. When she says to Lilly ‘Lilly, finally there’s some real hope in the world’, Vanessa Redgrave tells everything about Julie – her political views, her own believes and her whole character.

After that, Julia is gone for a long time, but as mentioned before, her presence is everywhere. Just like later in Howards End, Vanessa Redgrave has the ability to create an everlasting character mostly thanks to her own strength and dominating screen presence. And then it all comes to the scene in Berlin when Julia and Lilly meet again. Even Jane Fonda (normally not a favourite of mine) shines during this scene as she and Vanessa Redgrave truly seem like life-longs friends – Lilly, scared und unsure of the whole situation and Julia, strong and protecting. Vanessa Redgrave does not display an easy visible amount of emotions in that scene but she says everything with her eyes – her love for Lilly, her fear, her hope, the joy of experiencing a short moment of happiness even though the danger is constantly present. That glorious inner fire that is burning in Julia and in Vanessa Redgrave makes this scene a masterclass in acting. Even though Julia is only sitting at a table, Vanessa Redgrave makes her a force of nature. When she shows Lilly that she has a false leg, Julia just says ‘It’s done, that’s what it is.’

It is a very small role but Vanessa Redgrave is able to make Julia one of the most fascinating and interesting characters that ever grace the screen.

Number 15: Tilda Swinton as Karen Crowder in "Michael Clayton" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Tilda Swinton jumped up a good deal compared to my last ranking and this is no surprise since she is an outstanding actress in a very interesting part. Who doesn’t love a good-played villain and isn’t it even better when it is an outstandingly-played villain who isn’t one-dimensional but instead an intelligently crafted multidimensional human being?

Just like Mercedes McCambridge, Tilda Swinton uses her unique voice to her biggest advantage but unlike Sadie Burke, Karen Crowder is not strong or dominating – she would like to be but actually she suffers from her insecurity and neurotic nature, especially in circumstances she can’t handle. Tilda Swinton presents Karen as a woman who was promoted in a job she just can’t handle and who slowly loses control over everything. By this, her Karen becomes not a villain you hate but rather a villain you pity.  

Another similarity to Mercedes McCambridge is the fact that Karen Crowder, like Sadie Burke, is not the greatest role ever written but both actresses saw the potential and the strength and added their own personality and screen presence. In her first scene in the bathroom, Tilda Swinton already shows how everything has become too much for Karen and even though the audience doesn’t know yet what’s going on, it’s a captivating introduction.

This is followed by a fascinating montage in which Karen is rehearsing answers for an interview, constantly saying them again and again until she gives polished and seemingly spontaneous answers to the camera. Tilda Swinton opens the whole character up in those scenes and shows how much her job controls her life and how willing she is to let herself be controlled like this even though she can’t truly handle it.  

Later, Tilda Swinton establishes these ideas further when she first meets Michael Clayton. Her aggressiveness because he is late and her disbelieve at his thoughts again show how touchy she is, how easily she lets her suspicions overtake her character and how she seems unable to judge a situation spontaneously.  

In her later scenes, Tilda Swinton again shows Karen’s doubts and fears when she decides to take a way that will lead her into some dark territory. Like a child who is unable to play with the adults, Karen Crowder is lost in her own web of intrigues.

Her biggest moment is her final scene in which she basically runs the whole amount of Karen’s emotions in just a few seconds from happiness to shock to inability to handle her talk with Clayton to complete panic.

As mentioned before, it’s a fantastic performance of a very human villain.

Number 16: Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke in "All the King’s Men" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Mercedes McCambridge is another glorious example of an actress taking a small and secondary part and filling it with so much life and energy that she dominates the whole movie. Her role as Willie Stark’s secretary in All the King’s Men is neither large nor overly important but Mercedes McCambridge does so much wonders in this role that Sadie Burke becomes the most fascinating and interesting character of the whole story.

Mercedes McCambridge is an incredibly unique screen presence and this helps her to give an incredibly unique performance. Most of all, her Sadie Burke is a very intense creation, especially thanks to her strong and dominating voice. Overall, Mercedes McCambridge simply has one of the strongest screen presences ever and she gets everything out of her role and even much more.

Just like Katina Paxinou’s Pilar, Sadie Burke is a strong woman in a world of men, not sexy or attractive but still fascinating. Sadie is a hard-bitten woman who knows how to play the game. She never gets treated like a lady (more than once she is told to ‘Shut up’ and when she asks for a drink, all she hears is ‘Help yourself’) and Sadie has accepted it, playing with the boys on the same level instead of wanting to be a little wife. She always talks in an amused way about Willie’s wife, probably laughing about her fate as a housewife.

Mercedes McCambridge’s Sadie belongs in the world of politics and when she says ‘Anybody that pays me is smart’, there is little doubt that she is right. And very soon these two unlikely romantic interests, Willie Stark and Sadie Burke, start an affair and Sadie discovers that, despite all her strength and willpower, she, too, knows the feeling of jealousy and betrayal when she has to discover that, after having laughed at Willie’s wife, she also is just another woman for Willie. She angrily shouts ‘I hate all women!’ and again underlines that she feels more comfortable around men. All this leads up to her scene in front of the mirror when she sees the picture of Willie’s newest affair. She compares that image to herself and then opens up, telling that she had smallpox as a child which ‘leaves your face hard.’ She now shows that she, too, would like to be beautiful and attractive, showing all her lost dreams in her face. But at the same time she begins to tease Jack, knowing that it is his fiancée who is Willie’s newest affair. And then in just a small second she is tough self again when Jack slaps her and she just laughs in his face, saying ‘Well…’, as if he was a little boy.

If ever a small part was made outstanding by the unique work of a unique actress, then this is the case. 

Number 17: Anna Paquin as Flora McGrath in "The Piano" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

It’s funny because while I usually dislike most child-actors, all three juveniles who took home Oscars in this category made my Top 20. The first one to be mentioned is Anna Paquin who was able to pull off an upset and took home the Oscar for her performance as Flora McGrath, the daughter of mute Ada McGrath in the gothic love story The Piano.

The eternal question with child actors is always how much they really understood of their part and how much of their performance was guided by the director – but I don’t think it truly matters how a performance is created and the only thing that should be judged is what is on the screen.

In the case of Anna Paquin, this is surely a lot. Her character is Ada’s way of communicating – she translates her mother’s sign-language but she always likes to add a spiteful tone to her voice. In this way, she’s a typical child – she likes to lie, she likes to spy, she likes to misbehave but there is always more to her. The intentions of Flora are never truly clear and of course the question is how far the intentions of this little girl can truly go. Again, Flora is like every child – not knowing or understanding a lot but thinking she does and that way acting out of her own ideas and thoughts.

Anna Paquin has a very unique screen presence – she does not get a showy part like Holly Hunter but she never is overshadowed either. Both Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin work amazingly together and during their scenes together Flora always appears as if both a little girl and an adult are trapped inside her. 

It’s an essential supporting performance. She is most of the time in the background, but never slips out of the viewer’s mind and has some very impressive scenes, like when she is telling a lie about her father and of course, when she totally freaks out after her mother was punished by her husband.

It’s a very grim and dark performance, especially for a child and the character always remains a kind of mystery – and Anna Paquin is able to get all these aspects perfectly. 

Number 18: Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer in "Kramer vs. Kramer" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Not a lot of actresses were able to reach the top so fast as Meryl Streep – after an Emmy and a first Oscar nomination, she swept the national awards for the first time in her life for her role as Joanna Kramer in the courtroom drama Kramer vs. Kramer, a young wife and mother who leaves her family to discover herself and then later wants custody of her young son.

Right from the start, Meryl Streep shows how she perfectly she is always able to develop the technical parts of her characters – her broken face, her tears, her desperation are clearly visible when she wishes her son good-night before she leaves him. It’s clear that Joanna is not selfish when she leaves her family behind but instead sees it as the best solution for everyone because she realizes that she is close to a breakdown – the life she leads does not fulfill her anymore and her unhappiness has turned into a deep depression when she finally finds the will to leave. When she tells her husband Ted about her plans and talks with him in the hallway, Meryl Streep presents some of her most unaffected work – her desperation, her plea to let her go, her refusal to go back inside, the way she touches her wedding ring, everything is completely authentic and helps Meryl Streep to tell the audience all about her character in just a few short moments before she leaves the movie for a great deal of time.

When the character returns, Meryl Streep still shows her nervous sides but she reduced them to demonstrate that Joanna has truly found herself and is not the same woman she was when she left Ted and her son. Her scene with Dustin Hoffman in a little café is incredibly authentic as both actors portray a fake friendliness while slowly circling each other about their son.

 Later, Meryl Streep gets a lot of opportunities to demonstrate her ability to cry – during her monologue in the witness stand, after the session and later at the end. In all these scenes, Meryl Streep opens Joanna up more and more, finds new sides in her and lets the audience and the other characters understand her intentions better and better.  

Like her other Oscar-winning role in Sophie’s Choice, Joanna Kramer is not a very complex character and Meryl Streep follows the script with a performance that offers little surprises. But Meryl Streep always fills these limitations of her characters with so much detail, so much life and so much technical brilliance that the results are almost always glorious.

A strong and powerful performance that works as a great counterpart to the work by Dustin Hoffman.

Number 19: Mira Sorvino as Linda Ash in "Mighty Aphrodite" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

As you may know by now, dumb blondes are one of my weaknesses. Judy Holliday, Jean Hagen, Jennifer Tilly…when an actress knows how to play such a character and find the comedy without overdoing it, then I just can’t resist. And Mira Sorvino is no exception (and as I said before, every actress who has to kiss Woody Allen should get an Oscar!).

In Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, Mira Sorvino played Linda Ash, a slow-minded prostitute and porn-actress with an almost unbearable voice and a typical heart of gold. In her performance, Mira Sorvino benefits a great deal from Woody Allen’s screenplay – Mighty Aphrodite is one of his weaker efforts and nothing in it truly excites except for the character of Linda who is written as the perfect scene-stealer and given one hilarious line after another. So it was easy for Mira Sorvino to steal the show but she did not only become a vessel for Allen’s lines but instead created a wonderful, memorable and hilarious character.  

The biggest accomplishment of Mira Sorvino is the fact that she was able to combine Linda’s experience and lifestyle with a believable and intriguing child-like innocence. Even when she is saying lines like ‘There was this guy f**king me from behind and there were these two huge guys dressed like cops in my mouth at the same time’, there is something so sweet and innocent about her. Her Linda is not naïve in the sense that she doesn’t know any better – she chose her lifestyle but is also aware that she would like to change it. Yes, she is a bit stupid but Mira Sorvino fortunately treats Linda with all her respect – something that neither Woody Allen nor the movie do. The fact that Allen actually gives Linda a line like ‘He has to be as smart as I am’ when she talks about a guy for her is almost repellent – up until now Linda has never appeared to see herself as smart or anything like that so this line was nothing but a cheap, unnecessary shot at Linda’s costs. But Mira Sorvino beautifully survives all this and gives Linda a lot of unexpected depth and dimensions – when she tells Larry that she is the only one in her family with any ambition, it is strangely believable. She is also very touching when she tells Larry about her child which she gave up for adoption or at the end after she was hit by a guy or when she talks about her hopes and dreams – Mira Sorvino knows how to create a Linda who is both hilariously inappropriate but also beautifully lost.

But besides being touching, Mira Sorvino is most definitely another thing – incredibly funny. Throwing out lines like ‘Isn’t is a pisser?’ or ‘I hate it when a guy comes in, wipes out a big dick and waves it all over the joint’ or ‘I just got a small part in an Angela Dawnson movie!…I get to do it with her!’, she gives a true comedic tour-de-force performance that is a constant ray of light in an otherwise boring and insignificant movie.

I know this performance is not among the most popular in this category but I think that Mira Sorvino is simply wonderful.

Number 20: Rachel Weisz as Tessa Quayle in "The Constant Gardener" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Rachel Weisz keeps crawling up like nobody else in my ranking – starting in the Bottom 5 she jumped up into the 40s and now entered my Top 20 for her performance as Tessa, a political activist who is killed in Africa after her investigations of pharmaceutical companies.

Tessa is a sort of ambiguous character for me – on the one hand it’s easy to admire her work and her determination to help poor people but on the other hand she is also incredibly...stupid when it comes to her work. An intelligent woman like her should be a little more ‘realistic’ when it comes to fighting in Africa – does she really think that running around and insulting powerful people right and left will help her in any way? Her interest for the live of a young woman in a hospital is admirable but does she even think about her own, dead child for one second? So it is very easy to love Tessa for what she wants to do but also easy to criticise her for how she does it.

But what does all this mean for Rachel Weisz? Well, she is somehow able to ‘sell’ this character – the finds the perfect balance between determination and hesitation, she is powerful without being annoying, charming without being cute. It’s a strong and memorable characterization that helps to turn Tessa into a believable, multidimensional character whose struggle and fights become much more captivating than the screenplay could accomplish.

 Right from her first moments on-screen, Rachel Weisz is perfectly able to combine her British charm with a more cosmopolite attitude.  From her first meeting with Justin (don’t you just love the way she says ‘So do labradors’?) to her plea to take her to Africa she builds the foundation of the story that follows and creates a beautiful and realistic chemistry with Ralph Fiennes. She’s able to create a character that is not only realistic but one that actually captivates the viewer, a character you want to know more about and spend more time with and even though her terrible fate is clear right from the beginning, it still an incredibly loss and shock when it actually does happen.

In the hospital the intentions of her character may not be truly clear but Rachel Weisz is still heartbreaking and powerful when she pleads to Sandy to help her. And later, she communicates so much spoken, unspoken and hidden words when she tries to convince Sandy to give her an important letter.  

In some ways, Tessa may only be the set-up for the rest of the story but Rachel Weisz creates Tessa as a domineering presence – when she appears again at the end of the movie, it becomes clear how strong her influence and her presence really are.  

It’s a performance that grew on me and that may continue to grow on me in the future – a powerful and dedicated performance that created one of the most fascinating characters in this category.

Number 21: Mo’Nique as Mary Jones in "Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

I had never heard of Mo’Nique until she suddenly became the overwhelming frontrunner for the Oscar with one of the most praised performances of the last decade.  In Precious, she played Mary Jones, the abusive and violent mother of the title character. I was not really sure what to expect from this performance. My ranking of Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue already showed that I don’t care very much for those loud but ultimately empty and thin performances and Mo’Nique’s role in Precious is certainly very similar to that of Shelley Winters. But in the end, her performance achieved a much higher position because Mo’Nique achieves a level of intensity and horror that Shelley Winters does not even come close to – Shelley Winters was mostly a caricature, Mo’Nique is frighteningly real.

Of course, Mo’Nique faces the same problems as Shelley Winters – the limitations of the character. Just like Shelley Winters, Mo’Nique shouts and beats, she is almost like a cliché but she survives all this thanks to her overwhelming force and her celebrated final scene.

Right from the start, Precious leaves little doubt about the character of Mary – the way the camera finds her sleeping body already indicates trouble and a few seconds later she beats her daughter unconscious. But when she runs after her daughter, shouting at her or yells at her from down the stairs, Mo’Nique becomes such a force of nature, such a repellent creature that the screen probably can’t decide if it should burn or freeze from all her hate and anger.

Later scenes when Mary pretends to be a completely different person in front of a woman from social welfare and right after she left almost throws her grandson from the couch is again a moment that does not really allow Mo’Nique anything else than playing a cliché but she again makes it all believable and creates a character that is ultimately much more realistic than expected.

But in the end, it all comes down to her final monologue which is certainly one of the strongest scenes this category provides. Not holding back, Mo’Nique displays an unbelievable amount of emotions and feelings, giving a face to a character that cannot be understood. Very few performers have been so raw, so honest, so open and so unaffected at the same moment.

Most people would probably list this performance much higher, maybe even on number 1 in a ranking like this. Personally, the limitations that the early parts of her performance present keep from letting her go so high and I have to be honest and say that Mo’Nique gives only my fourth favorite performance in the cast but it’s still a powerful and outstanding portrayal that deservedly became such a sensation.