2026 Oscars Best Supporting Actress Prediction: Which Performance Has The Best Chance To Win

The 98th Academy Awards are coming up on March 15 ... and when it comes to the race for best supporting actress, things are really up in the air. So who do we at Looper think is poised to take home the big prize? That would be Amy Madigan, the veteran actress who returned to the big screen to play the sinister witch Aunt Gladys in "Weapons."

To be fair, though, the race is very much still in play ... because even though Madigan is our pick for the winner, there could potentially be some big surprises in this category. Alongside Madigan, the four other nominees for supporting actress are Teyana Taylor for "One Battle After Another" (which won her the Golden Globe), Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for "Sentimental Value," and Wunmi Mosaku for "Sinners." Honestly, every single one of these performances is astonishingly good, but on the heels of Madigan winning the Actor Award for "Weapons," she seems like the safest bet going into the Academy Awards ceremony.

Madigan, who almost quit acting before writer-director Zach Cregger basically begged her to play the main villain in his horror-thriller "Weapons," is genuinely transformed as Gladys, a woman of indeterminate origin who may or may not be a witch that uses human beings as energy vessels of sorts to stay alive. There's been some chatter online — which is, to be honest, categorically incorrect and unfair — that this award, were it to go to Madigan, would be some kind of "career Oscar" for the underrated and previously underutilized industry veteran. That couldn't be further from the case. Madigan's Gladys is far and away the most-discussed aspect of "Weapons," and if she wins the Oscar, it'll be a victory for her and the entire horror genre.

There's no question that Amy Madigan's biggest competition in the supporting actress category is Teyana Taylor, the singer turned actress who blew audiences away in Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another." (You can take that literally, if you like; her character, revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills, gets a blockbuster scene where she fires multiple rounds from an automatic rifle with her massive pregnant belly exposed.) In just under 20 actual minutes of screentime — meaning that Taylor's performance, like Madigan's at around 15 minutes, is truly supporting and not engaging in any traditional category fraud — Taylor makes an enormous impression as Perfidia, a woman whose tough exterior belies a frightened and even maternal heart.

Still, thanks to her win at the Actor Awards, Madigan has emerged as a front-runner ... and again, this would be huge not just for Madigan herself, but the horror genre as a whole. Performers like Toni Collette and even previous Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o have been criminally overlooked at the Academy Awards for their respective horror projects "Hereditary" and "Us," and Madigan would be one of a small handful of performers to win for a scary movie. (Jodie Foster, Ruth Gordon, and Kathy Bates winning for "The Silence of the Lambs," "Rosemary's Baby," and "Misery" are prime examples.) 

Plus, not for nothing — Madison is transcendently good in "Weapons" as Gladys, a sickly-sweet woman with garish makeup whose entire demeanor turns on a dime as she zombifies people into energy vessels that will attack at will (one of many interpretations of the movie's title). Gladys is the aged, mummified heart of "Weapons," and it would be thrilling to see her win.

We nearly chose Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as the spoiler in this category for her turn as Agnes Borg Petersen, the slightly more well-adjusted of two sisters in "Sentimental Value" — because ever since that film got a wide release, people have rightly praised Lilleaas for her vulnerable and open performance. While Lilleaas would be a phenomenal winner — as, frankly, would Elle Fanning for her role as American actress Rachel Kemp in the same film — the potentially delightful spoiler we're going with here is Wunmi Mosaku for "Weapons."

The supporting actress category is almost entirely first-time nominees (besides Amy Madigan, but it's been 40 years) ... but Mosaku's inclusion was a truly joyful surprise. As Annie, a hoodoo practitioner who's still mourning the baby she lost with her estranged husband Elijah "Smoke" Moore — one of two Michael B. Jordans — Mosaku's performance is at once quiet and bombastic, depending on what the scene requires. In intimate scenes with Smoke, Annie is sensuous yet hard-edged, facing the husband who abandoned her for a life of crime in Chicago ... and when vampires attack the juke joint Smoke and his twin brother Elias "Stack" Moore launch one evening in the Mississippi Delta, she turns serious, insisting that everyone chew on some pickled garlic for protection. We won't spoil Annie's ending in case you haven't seen it yet — and you should — but it's magnificent.

Frankly, the women in the best supporting actress category at this year's Oscars should break up the statue and split it like the Spring Fling crown in "Mean Girls." Failing that, Madigan will likely win ... and you can find out the winner for yourself on March 15 at 7 p.m. EST on ABC and Hulu.