2027 Oscars Best Supporting Actress Predictions: Winner, Runner-Up And Other Contenders

Laura Dern. Allison Janney. Viola Davis. Lupita Nyong'o. Penélope Cruz. Catherine Zeta-Jones. Rachel Weisz. Angelina Jolie. I'm not just listing extremely gorgeous and unbelievably talented women for fun here, though that does sound like a pleasant diversion. Rather, these are all performers who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at some point during their careers. Supporting performances — which are determined to be "supporting" based on screen time — are the backbone of great films, and the list of Best Supporting Actress winners is a real murderer's row (complimentary) of extraordinary women.

In early 2026, industry veteran Amy Madigan took home that year's trophy for her scene-stealing, flat-out staggering, and genuinely frightening performance as the mysterious and canny Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger's excellent sophomore film "Weapons." (Not only was this well-deserved, but Madigan won for a horror performance, which is thrilling ... and /Film was demanding that she take home the Oscar before nominations even came out.) So, who's going to win in 2027? Let me get something out of the way: These are my best guesses when it comes to the winner and nominees for the forthcoming 99th Academy Awards. Also, aside from said best guesses about the winner and the runner-up who could unseat them, these options are presented in alphabetical order by the actor's last name. Without further ado, here are those guesses.

Anne Hathaway is the first of a few actors I've included on this list who already has an Oscar — one, in fact, for Best Supporting Actress for her pivotal performance in Tom Hooper's otherwise miserable adaptation of "Les Misérables" — but you can never, ever, ever count a former winner out. As much as the Academy ostensibly wants to share their wealth, people win multiple trophies all the time, and if the performance is good enough, you don't even need to wait a long time. (This will come up again elsewhere in my Oscar coverage, but Emma Stone won in 2017 for "La La Land" and was so undeniably great in "Poor Things" that she took home a second statue in 2024.)

That's why Hathaway is probably the frontrunner to win Best Supporting Actress — and she's all but guaranteed a nomination — for her work in Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey." Like her performance in "Les Misérables," and unlike Zoe Saldaña's semi-fraulent win in 2025 for "Emilia Peréz" (in which Saldaña is essentially a co-lead), Hathaway's turn as Odysseus' (Matt Damon) long-suffering and seemingly abandoned wife Penelope is a true supporting role. She's also magnificent. Hathaway imbues her Penelope with a steely, flinty-eyed, and reserved demeanor, only letting her mask slip when she loses her temper at her nearly-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) or when she suspects that the beggar before her might be her long-lost husband after all. Don't count Hathaway out just because she won in 2013. She might take this one home, too.

Like her biggest competitor Anne Hathaway, Penélope Cruz would be a repeat winner if she takes home an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2027. She won in 2008 for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and has earned nominations for movies like "Volver" and "Parallel Mothers" as well. (The less said about "Nine," which she was once again nominated for, the better.) Cruz actually appears in two potential Academy heavyweights making a stir this awards season, but for now, I'm making an educated and probably correct guess that her excellent work in "The Invite" will be the film to earn her a spot in the Best Supporting Actress race.

Olivia Wilde's claustrophobic film, which presents itself like a play (fittingly so, as it's a remake of a Spanish movie based on an actual play) and takes place almost entirely in a single location, casts Cruz as Pina, a divorcée in a passionate relationship with a widower named Hawk (Edward Norton, whose name may or may not appear on a different list about Best Supporting Actor hopefuls). Cruz is dynamic, thoughtful, lived-in, and hysterically funny (a lengthy segment about her character's dietary preferences had me in stitches when I first watched the movie), and, I say this respectfully, absurdly sexy. Frankly, she's one of the industry's most reliably talented performers, and she'll also probably get acclaim for her turn in "La Bola Negra" ... but her work in "The Invite" is attention-grabbing and a perfect fit for the Supporting Actress category. If Hathaway's campaign stumbles, Cruz could end up edging her out.

Here's the thing about "The Odyssey." Not only is it one of the biggest movies of the year and an unqualified success financially and critically, but it's also got a ridiculously stacked cast — so, you should prepare to see and hear this film's name a lot during awards season. That's why, even though Anne Hathaway seems like a lock to at least get nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, her co-star Samantha Morton could very well snag a spot as well for her astonishing turn as the mysterious witch Circe. Morton makes a meal, literally and figuratively, out of her brief screen time in Christopher Nolan's epic, in the process creating one of the scariest 2026 movie scenes that's not in a horror film.

Morton's Circe, as you might remember from that time you read the epic Greek poem attributed to Homer in ninth grade, is a sorceress who lives in an isolated home on a far-flung island. While lost at sea, Odysseus and his men approach her looking for food and support. Wary of them after presumably being taken advantage of by dishonorable men, Circe invites all of the men — save for Odysseus, who's off doing his own thing — into her home and transforms them into pigs. Morton takes this relatively brief and straightforward scene and imbues it with so much passion and power that you can't look away, even during its most stomach-churning special effects ... and she manages to make Circe fully realized and human to boot. That's no small feat, and hopefully, Morton's name will be included in this year's selection of nominees.

Mike Leigh, one of the most celebrated directors of his or any generation, has said that 2026's "Tender Loving Care" will probably be his last film due to the fact that he has myositis, a condition causing his own immune system to attack his body and cause painful inflammation. Thankfully, if "Tender Loving Care" is Leigh's last movie, it's in great hands with its star Kate O'Flynn. The actor, who plays Amy, a social worker fresh out of a five-year relationship who moves in with her best friend Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson) to begin again, has actually worked with Leigh before on projects like "Happy-Go-Lucky," "Mr. Turner," and "Peterloo," but "Tender Loving Care" gives her a bigger spotlight. Contrasting Amy's story with that of her ailing parents (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), "Tender Loving Care" is a spotlight for O'Flynn ... and the timing couldn't be better.

O'Flynn, as you might know, is fresh off a surprising but well-earned victory at the 2026 Emmys for her unbelievable supporting turn as the wry, weird, and wonderful Patricia on "Widow's Bay," the Apple TV horror-comedy series where she plays the assistant to the titular haunted island's mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys, who also won an Emmy for his performance). Though O'Flynn is arguably a co-lead, category fraud isn't exactly novel at the Oscars, and the strength of this performance, as well as her recent Emmys boost, could get her a spot in this category.

This article is about predicting who will win Best Supporting Actress at the 2027, as well as who might snag nominations. It's not who I want to win. If you're curious, though, I want Merritt Wever to win for her astonishingly nasty turn in Lance Oppenheim's "Primetime." As Andie Bender, the cutthroat "Dateline NBC" producer who helps Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen make "To Catch a Predator" a massive success, Wever — an Emmy winner and a small-screen stalwart who's appeared in everything from "New Girl" to "Severance" — maintains a deceptively sweet and kind demeanor, especially when dealing with the show's new "teen" decoy Dan Plum (an extraordinary Skyler Gisondo). When Andie's façade cracks, though, that's when the magic happens. Even when she's offered a job on a different hidden-camera show that tackles something other than outright child abuse, Andie can't fake it. She's perfectly at home on "To Catch a Predator," a show with ostensibly noble goals that turned the capturing of sexual abusers into entertainment.

People will talk about Pattinson and Gisondo a lot in regards to "Primetime" as awards season continues, but honestly? Wever blows them both out of the water, and that's really saying something. Hopefully, she will make it into a potentially crowded Best Supporting Actress race. I can't rule anything out at all, but I also can't call her a frontrunner. Still, she deserves to get one of those five spots, and at the end of the day, she might even deserve the award the most.

Oscar nominations will be announced on January 21, 2027 — and the ceremony will air on March 14.