Best Supporting Actress: Co-Stars and Competitors

The women of The Fighter -- Amy Adams and Melissa Leo -- are competing against each other for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Is this unusual? Not at all. The Academy frequently selects two actors from the same film in the same category, and most often in the Supporting Actress race. Since the creation of the "supporting" races in 1936, here are all the pairs (and one trio!) of supporting actress contenders (with an asterisk* indicating a win):

1939	Gone With the Wind	Olivia de Havilland, *Hattie McDaniel
1941	The Little Foxes	Patricia Collinge, Teresa Wright
1942	Mrs. Miniver	May Whitty, *Teresa Wright
1943	The Song of Bernadette	Gladys Cooper, Anne Revere
1945	Mildred Pierce	Eve Arden, Ann Blyth
1947	Gentlemen’s Agreement	*Celeste Holm, Anne Revere
1948	I Remember Mama	Barbara Bel Geddes, Ellen Corby
1949	Come to the Stable	Celeste Holm, Elsa Lanchester
	Pinky	Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters
1950	All About Eve	Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter
1954	The High and the Mighty	Jan Sterling, Claire Trevor
1956	The Bad Seed	Eileen Heckart, Patty McCormack
1957	Peyton Place	Hope Lange, Diane Varsi
1959	Imitation of Life	Susan Kohner, Juanita Moore
1963	Tom Jones	Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, Joyce Redman
1965	Othello	Joyce Redman, Maggie Smith
1970	Airport	*Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton
1971	The Last Picture Show	Ellen Burstyn, *Cloris Leachman
1973	Paper Moon	Madeline Kahn, *Tatum O’Neal
1975	Nashville	Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin
1979	Kramer vs. Kramer	Jane Alexander, *Meryl Streep
1982	Tootsie	Teri Garr, *Jessica Lange
1985	The Color Purple	Margaret Avery, Oprah Winfrey
1988	Working Girl	Joan Cusack, Sigourney Weaver
1989	Enemies: A Love Story	Anjelica Huston, Lena Olin
1994	Bullets Over Broadway	Jennifer Tilly, *Dianne Wiest
2000	Almost Famous	Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand
2001	Gosford Park	Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith
2002	Chicago	Queen Latifah, *Catherine Zeta-Jones
2006	Babel	Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi
2008	Doubt	Amy Adams, Viola Davis
2009	Up in the Air	Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick
2010	The Fighter	Amy Adams, Melissa Leo

So that's 33 occurrences in 75 years, resulting in 10 wins. What does this trend mean? Is the Academy so unadventurous it throws all its nominations to the same small group of films each year? Or are there so few good roles for women that the few awards-worthy roles are concentrated in the same movies? For comparison, only five films in the Academy's 83 years have yielded two Best Actress nominations:

1950	All About Eve	Anne Baxter, Bette Davis
1959	Suddenly Last Summer	Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor
1977	The Turning Point	Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine
1983	Terms of Endearment	*Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger
1991	Thelma and Louise	Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon

Ironic piece of trivia: All About Eve is the only film to receive as many as four female acting nominations, and yet the only acting trophy it won went to George Sanders.

Does that mean it's harder to win an Oscar if when competing against a co-star -- do they "cancel each other out"? Maybe. You could argue that Tatum O'Neal, Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, and Catherine Zeta-Jones all won because their roles were large enough to compete in the Best Actress race, and they were unfairly pitted against genuine supporting players in their films. Perhaps actresses with roughly equal screen time (such as Ms. Adams and Ms. Leo) are less likely to win. However, with Melisso Leo's triumphs at the Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors' Guild awards, she has emerged the clear favorite.