Amy Madigan became a first-time Academy Award recipient when she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 2026 Oscars — 40 years after her first nomination.
Madigan, 75, ultimately secured the prize for Weapons during the Sunday, March 15, celebratory event at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
“Everybody’s asking about how it’s been 40 years [since I was first nominated] and what’s different about this time? It is different because I have this little guy,” she quipped while showing off her award. “I was in the shower last night trying to think of something to say as I was shaving my legs, [even though] I’ve got pants on and I don’t have to worry about that. We’re advised to not say all these names because nobody knows who the hell these people are.”
Madigan continued, “But you’re not rattling them off. They’re people that mean something to you and that you couldn’t be here without them.”
Sentimental Value’s Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku and One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor were the remaining nominees for Best Supporting Actress.
No matter who won the category, the honoree was guaranteed to earn the first Oscar of her acting career since none of the contenders were Academy Award winners prior to the 2026 ceremony. Fanning, 27, Lilleaas, 36, Mosaku, 39, and Taylor, 35, were all first-time Oscar nominees too, while Madigan, 75, previously received a Best Supporting Actress nod in 1986 for Twice in a Lifetime.
The Best Supporting Actress race at the Oscars was tight given that awards season failed to produce an obvious frontrunner. Madigan notably defeated Fanning, Lilleaas, Mosaku, Taylor and Wicked: For Good’s Ariana Grande to win the category at the Critics Choice Awards in January, while she bested Grande, Mosaku, Taylor and Marty Supreme’s Odessa A’zion at the Actor Awards earlier this month.
“I really wasn’t expecting all of this because I thought people would like the movie and I thought people would dig [my Weapons character] Gladys, but you love Gladys,” Madigan said in her Critics Choice Awards acceptance speech. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
Taylor, for her part, won the supporting actress Golden Globe in January, overcoming Madigan, Grande, Fanning, Lilleaas and The Smashing Machine’s Emily Blunt.
After nominations for the 2026 Oscars were revealed, film fans were quick to call out some major surprises and snubs. When Lewis Pullman and Danielle Brooks teamed up to announce the nominees for the 98th annual Academy Awards on January 22, many movie fans weren’t surprised to see Sinners dominate the nominations list, with a […]
“I almost didn’t even write a speech because I didn’t think I was [going to win],” Taylor said on stage at the time. “Thank you to the Golden Globe voters for seeing me and reminding me that purpose always finds its moment.”
Later in her emotional speech, Taylor dedicated her trophy to “my brown sisters and little brown girls watching.”
“Our softness is not a liability. Our depth is not too much,” she added. “Our light does not need permission to shine. We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter, and our dreams deserve space.”
At the BAFTA Awards in February, Mosaku received her flowers when she won in the supporting actress category against A’zion, Lilleaas, Taylor, The Ballad of Wallis Island’s Carey Mulligan and Hamnet’s Emily Watson.
“I found a part of myself in [my Sinners character] Annie — a part of my hopes, my ancestral power and connection, parts of myself I thought I’d lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in,” Mosaku said in her acceptance speech. “Through her, I deepened my belief in my potential, my capacity to love and hope in the darkest moments of grief and in the face of this harsh world.”
