Supporting Actors and Actresses — How They Tie in to Best Picture

This has been a great year for supporting performances. I’ll never understand why The Shape of Water was left off the SAG ensemble nominee list considering what a masterful ensemble it has. Octavia Spencer’s work as Sally Hawkins’ friend and co-workers is among the best supporting performances of 2017, Richard Jenkins is brilliant as her best friend and neighbor, and finally, one of the best and totally unrecognized performances in the same film: Michael Shannon as the evil boss representing a premonition of Trump’s America. To my mind, The Shape of Water is easily one of the most powerful ensembles of the year, along with those that are also being recognized, like Mudbound and Three Billboards and The Big Sick.

The popularity of these films, along with Lady Bird and Get Out, means that all will likely have some acting nominees at the Oscars. Some recent notable exceptions where SAG ensemble recognition didn’t result in any Oscar nominations are Beasts of No Nation, Straight Outta Compton, The Butler, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

There are many great lead/supporting pairings this year too:

Frances McDormand/Sam Rockwell
Saoirse Ronan/Laurie Metcalf
Margot Robbie/Allison Janney
Sally Hawkins/Octavia Spencer/Richard Jenkins
Timothée Chalamet/Armie Hammer
Brooklynn Prince/Willem Dafoe

And then there are supporting performances and lead performances that stand apart, like Holly Hunter in The Big Sick, or Mary J. Blige in Mudbound, or lead performances like Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out, or Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in The Post, etc.

How might we look at the supporting categories in terms of whether or not they can tell us anything about BestPicture? Supporting Actress nominations are very often connected to either a nominated lead performance or a Best Picture contender. While there hasn’t be a lead performance by a female in a Best Picture winner since 2004’s Million Dollar Baby, there have been plenty of supporting actress nominations, especially recently:

2016 — 5/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner
2015 — 1/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2014 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2013 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2012 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2011 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2010 — 4/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2009 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.

Once you go back before the Academy expanded the Best Picture ballot, you see fewer supporting actress contenders linked to a Best Picture nominee or winner:

2008 — 1/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2007 — 2/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2006 — 2/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2005 — 1/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2004 — 2/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.

Prior to 2010, in fact, you have to go all the way back to 2002 to find a year where there was a Best Supporting Actress nominee tied to a Best Picture winner. Something about the preferential ballot and the expanded number of Best Picture contenders shifted things so that Best Supporting Actress overlapped more with Best Picture. What could that be? Changing Hollywood? Changing Oscars? It’s hard to say, but it is what it is.

One thing to note: it’s rare for Best Supporting Actress and Best Picture to win together. In the era of the preferential ballot it happened only once, with Lupita Nyong’o and 12 Years a Slave. Before that, you have to go back to Catherine Zeta-Jones with Chicago. Jennifer Connelly won with A Beautiful Mind the year before, Judi Dench won with Shakespeare in Love, Juliette Binoche with The English Patient, and then it’s all the way back to 1979 with Meryl Streep and Kramer vs. Kramer. That period between 1996 through 2002 was the best era for supporting actress winners and Best Picture.

This year, we have these names being floated for Best Supporting Actress:

Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird — probable winner/probable Best Picture nominee
Allison Janney, I Tonya — maybe winner/maybe Best Picture nominee
Octavia Spencer, Shape of Water — probable Best Picture nominee
Holly Hunter, The Big Sick — probable Best Picture nominee
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound — maybe Best Picture nominee
Hong Chau, Downsizing — probably NOT Best Picture nominee
Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip — NOT Best Picture nominee

Most likely we’ll be looking at a scenario where there are 3/5, since that’s been the average supporting actress nominees tied to a Best Picture since ’09.

Moving on to Best Supporting Actor, let’s look at how they’re tied in with Best Picture nominees and winners in the era of the expanded ballot:

2016 — 4/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2015 — 4/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2014 — 3/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2013 — 5/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2012 — 4/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2011 — 2/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.
2010 — 4/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, one tied to Best Picture winner.
2009 – 1/5 tied to Best Picture nominee, zero tied to Best Picture winner.

Overall, men do better than women across the board in both lead and supporting categories when tied to Best Picture. However, from 2009 to 2016 the exact same number of nominees in both supporting categories were tied to Best Picture. 2009 is the only year in the expanded ballot where no supporting acting nominees from The Hurt Locker. were in either category.  Every other year, the Best Picture winner had at least one or the other or both. From 2013–2016 the Best Picture winner had both a Supporting Actor and Actress nominee. 2012 only had actor, 2011 only had actress, 2010 had both, and 2009 had neither.

The Best Supporting Actor winner has matched the Best Picture winner only once in the era of the expanded ballot: Mahershala Ali winning last year for Moonlight. Before that, you have Javier Bardem with No Country for Old Men, Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby, Gene Hackman for Unforgiven, and then way back to Jack Nicholson for Terms of Endearment.

Our potential frontrunners are:

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project — a probable Best Picture nominee.
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards — a probable Best Picture nominee.
Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name — a probable Best Picture nominee.
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water — a probable Best Picture nominee.

The fifth slot will tell a good deal, I would think, about what the Academy thinks. Let’s say Tracy Letts gets in for Lady Bird. That would tip the scales in the favor of that movie, just as it would if Woody Harrelson got in for Three Billboards, as he did with the SAG nominations, or Michael Stuhlbarg for Call Me By Your Name or Michael Shannon for Shape of Water. Or even Ray Romano for The Big Sick.

It’s possible that the fifth slot will reveal much. On the other hand, if it’s someone like Christopher Plummer for All the Money in the World, well then we’re back where we were before, with no real clues either way.

Bottom line: it’s pretty hard to win either supporting actress or supporting actor along with Best Picture in the era of the expanded ballot. In both cases, Lupita Nyong’o and Mahershala Ali, they were the frontrunners regardless of whether their films won or not. Not everyone thought 12 Years would win and no one really thought Moonlight would. More likely, the winner in either supporting category is not in a Best Picture winner, but often appears in a Best Picture nominee.