Traditionally, Oscar voters honor smaller roles in the Best Supporting Actress category, especially compared to the corresponding male one. The average supporting female performance clocks in at just 24 minutes and 37 seconds, with the majority of them falling under 22 minutes. Still, a decent amount of long ones have been consistently recognized, including six that reach the one hour screen time mark. Here is a look at the 10 longest (and here are the 10 longest winners):
10. Jennifer Jason Leigh (“The Hateful Eight”)
57 minutes, 45 seconds (34.46% of the film)
2016’s group of Best Supporting Actress nominees boast the highest screen time average (51 minutes and 46 seconds) in the history of both supporting categories. Leigh, Rooney Mara (“Carol”), and winner Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”) concurrently earned spots on this list and all attracted controversy by appearing to have been placed in the wrong category. As crass outlaw Daisy Domergue, Leigh plays the only major female character in “The Hateful Eight,” and has the second highest amount of screen time in the film after Samuel L. Jackson, who clocks in at one hour, 11 minutes, and 50 seconds.
9. Barbara Bel Geddes (“I Remember Mama”)
58 minutes, 10 seconds (43.36% of the film)
In 1949, Bel Geddes captured the attention of Oscar voters with her second film role as aspiring young author Katrin Hanson. As the narrator, she is present in close to an hour of the film, which placed hers among the ten longest performances nominated in either supporting category until 1966. She lost the award to Claire Trevor, who won on her second of three bids for her 17 minutes and 12 seconds of screen time in “Key Largo.”
8. Kate Winslet (“Sense and Sensibility”)
59 minutes, 32 seconds (43.73% of the film)
Although Winslet was part of the supporting female lineup in 2016, her 39-minute and 41-second performance in “Steve Jobs” is generally viewed as one that belongs in the category. However, her supporting nomination for 1995’s “Sense and Sensibility” has sparked a fair amount of debate. She managed to avoid further scrutiny when another arguable lead, Mira Sorvino, took the award for her 35-minute and six-second performance in “Mighty Aphrodite.” Of her seven nominated performances, including four in the lead category, Winslet’s turn as Marianne Dashwood remains the second longest, surpassed only by her “Titanic” screen time of one hour, 26 minutes, and 29 seconds.
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7. Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”)
59 minutes, 37 seconds (49.88% of the film)
As artist Gerda Wegener, Vikander earned her only Oscar nomination and win in 2016, defeating a roster of actresses whose screen times range from 31 to 71 minutes. She appeared in half of her film and received nearly as much narrative focus as her co-star, Eddie Redmayne, making her category placement a contentious subject throughout the awards season. Before her Oscar victory, she won supporting trophies at both the SAG and Critics Choice Awards. Golden Globe and BAFTA voters, however, nominated her as a lead. While the controversy and confusion could have easily been detrimental to her campaign, the quality of her performance and her impressive body of work that year (including a lauded role in Best Visual Effects winner “Ex Machina”) secured her win.
6. Hailee Steinfeld (“True Grit”)
1 hour, 0 minutes, 21 seconds (54.76% of the film)
The Coen brothers’ “True Grit” was the second adaptation of the novel of the same name, with the first having been released in 1969. John Wayne starred in the original film and won a Best Actor Oscar for his one hour, 10 minutes, and 47 seconds of screen time as Rooster Cogburn. 21-year-old Kim Darby, portraying teenager Mattie Ross, appears in one hour, 24 minutes, and 22 seconds of the film. Both roles were cut shorter in the 2010 version, but 14-year-old Steinfeld’s Ross still maintains a nearly 12-minute lead over Jeff Bridges’s Cogburn. She remains one of six supporting actresses to be nominated for having at least one hour of screen time, two more of whom were also children at the time of their nominations.
5. Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Secrets & Lies”)
1 hour, 0 minutes, 38 seconds (42.78% of the film)
Jean-Baptiste earned her first and only Oscar nomination for her role as Hortense Cumberbatch, a black optometrist who learns her birth mother is a white factory worker. It was her first major film role, and the academy recognition launched a steady career. Brenda Blethyn was nominated in the lead category for playing the mother character, and their screen times are separated by only 38 seconds. In the end, Jean-Baptiste lost to Juliette Binoche, whose screen time in 1996’s Best Picture winner “The English Patient” totals 42 minutes and four seconds.
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4. Patty Duke (“The Miracle Worker”)
1 hour, 5 minutes, 43 seconds (61.67% of the film)
In 1963, Duke won an Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Keller, a role she originated on the Broadway stage. At 16 years old, she made history as the first of three children to win a competitive acting Oscar. At the time, only two younger actresses had previously received nominations: 11-year-old Patty McCormack (“The Bad Seed”) and 14-year-old Bonita Granville (“These Three”). Duke directly competed against and prevailed over a third, 10-year-old Mary Badham (“To Kill a Mockingbird”). Her performance also broke the record for longest to win in either supporting category, with over half of all lead winners up to that point not even meeting her screen time of nearly 66 minutes.
3. Tatum O’Neal (“Paper Moon”)
1 hour, 6 minutes, 58 seconds (65.49% of the film)
11 years after Duke’s trailblazing win, her age and screen time records were both broken by 10-year-old O’Neal when she won for her film debut as Addie Loggins. After Ann Blyth (“Mildred Pierce”) and Brandon deWilde (“Shane”), she became the third and most recent child actor to compete directly against an adult actor from the same film. Her fellow nominee, Madeline Kahn, appears in just nine minutes and 50 seconds of “Paper Moon,” making her performance the 19th shortest ever nominated in the category at the time. In terms of screen time, O’Neal not only stood out among her competitors, but also outpaced four of the year’s lead nominees, including Best Actress winner Glenda Jackson (“A Touch of Class”).
2. Rooney Mara (“Carol”)
1 hour, 10 minutes, 37 seconds (59.67% of the film)
Mara garnered her first supporting nomination in 2016 for playing Therese Belivet, an aspiring photographer who has an affair with an older married woman. Despite having 11 minutes and nearly 10% more screen time than winner Alicia Vikander, her supporting placement was more solidified that year, with only the Golden Globe voters classifying her as a lead. However, her having the highest screen time in the lineup and nearly six minutes more than her lead-nominated co-star, Cate Blanchett, places her at the forefront of the 2016 category fraud discourse. Her performance is even nine minutes and over 20% longer than the one she gives in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which earned her a Best Actress nomination in 2012.
1. Jennifer Jones (“Since You Went Away”)
1 hour, 15 minutes, 38 seconds (42.73% of the film)
After a 12-year hiatus, 65-year-old Ethel Barrymore experienced a career resurgence when she won Best Supporting Actress in 1945 for her 24-minute and 19-second role in “None but the Lonely Heart.” At the time, she was the oldest woman to have won an acting Oscar, defeating competitors who ranged from 19 to 45 years old. Included in the group was 25-year-old Jones, who had just won the Best Actress award for “The Song of Bernadette” the year before for a performance that was five minutes shorter than this one. Although she missed out on a second trophy, she managed to make history as the first supporting female nominee to pass the one hour screen time mark, and she has held the top spot on this list for over 75 years. She finished her career with a total of five nominations, with this remaining the second longest of her nominated performances despite being the only one placed in the supporting category.
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