Actor Awards 2026: Amy Madigan's Win Upends Fractured Oscars Supporting Actress Race

US actress Amy Madigan poses with the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for “Weapons” during the 32nd Annual Actor Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 1, 2026. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)

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Seventy-five-year-old Amy Madigan took home Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role at the 2026 Actor Awards on March 1 for her terrifying turn as Aunt Gladys in the horror hit Weaponsdelivering a significant upset in what has become the awards season’s most unpredictable race.

Running to the stage mimicking the kids in WeaponsMadigan beat out Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another), who won the Golden Globe; Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), who won the BAFTA; Ariana Grande (Wicked: For Good); and Odessa A’zion (Marty Supreme) in a category that has seen a different winner at every major ceremony this season.

The win marks a remarkable late-career resurgence for Madigan, who was on the verge of quitting acting entirely before director Zach Cregger cast her in Weapons. It also positions her as a serious contender, though far from a sure winner, for the Oscar on March 15.

A Fractured Awards Season

LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 22: Wunmi Mosaku, winner of the Supporting Actress Award for 'Sinners', poses backstage during the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2026 at The Royal Festival Hall on February 22, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Scott Garfitt/BAFTA via Getty Images)

BAFTA via Getty Images

Unlike recent years when supporting actress races produced clean sweeps (Zoe Saldaña and Da’Vine Joy Randolph both won all four major precursors in 2024 and 2023 respectively), the 2026 race has been split three ways:

• Critics’ Choice Awards: Amy Madigan
• Golden Globes: Teyana Taylor
• BAFTAs: Wunmi Mosaku
• Actor Awards: Amy Madigan

Madigan’s Critics’ Choice win came after she dominated critics’ circles including the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the London Critics Circle, and the Australian Academy of Cinema Awards. However, she notably missed a BAFTA nomination entirely and lost the Golden Globe to Taylor.

Gold Derby’s pre-ceremony survey of 150 anonymous SAG-AFTRA members showed Madigan with overwhelming support, more votes than all other nominees combined. “Amazing Amy is a description that several SAG-AFTRA members used while commenting on Madigan’s terrifying turn in Weapons,” Gold Derby reported. One voter said: “I’m still having nightmares about Aunt Gladys—that’s how much her performance stayed with me.”

The Performance That Changed Everything

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 31: A costumed reveler dressed as Aunt Gladys from “Weapons” attends the 2025 West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval on October 31, 2025 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)

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In WeaponsMadigan plays Aunt Gladys, (spoiler) a parasitic witch who claims to be the great-aunt of young Alex Lilly, the only child in his third-grade class who doesn’t mysteriously vanish in the night. Gladys moves into the Lilly family home claiming terminal illness, then uses witchcraft to turn Alex’s parents into mindless husks while kidnapping 17 children to feed off their life force.

The role required extreme prosthetics including a bright red wig with baby bangs, thick-framed tinted sunglasses, smeared red lipstick, and intentionally unflattering makeup recalling Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Weapons grossed over $268 million worldwide for Warner Bros. against a $38 million budget, becoming one of 2025’s biggest surprise hits.

40 Years Between Nominations

If Madigan wins the Oscar, she will have done so 40 years after her first nomination for Bud Yorkin’s 1985 blue-collar drama Twice in a Lifetimein which she played Gene Hackman’s troubled daughter. That would mark the longest gap between nominations for any actress in Academy Awards history, and the third-longest gap for any actor (after Henry Fonda’s 41 years and Judd Hirsch’s 42 years).

The intervening decades saw a prolific career across film, television, and stage. She’s perhaps best known for playing Annie Kinsella, Kevin Costner’s patient wife in Field of Dreams (1989), and Chanice Kobolowski in John Hughes’ Uncle Buck (1989). Her TV credits include the title role in the 1989 TV movie Roe v. Wadefor which she won a Golden Globe and received an Emmy nomination for playing attorney Sarah Weddington; HBO’s Carnival them (2003-2005); and recurring roles on Grey’s Anatomy and Fringe.

On stage, she made her Broadway debut playing Stella Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin in A Streetcar Named Desire (1992).

Despite this extensive body of work, Madigan told The Hollywood Reporter she felt “retired” by the industry in recent years. “I understand that I’m not the leading lady — I’m a character actor, and I like doing things with my body,” she said. “Maybe that was confusing to people, or what they were looking for was not me.”

The Road to Oscar

Madigan faces significant historical obstacles. Weapons received no other Oscar nominations, a rare scenario. Over the past 25 years, only five actors have won Oscars as their film’s sole nominee, and the last supporting actress to do so was Penélope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008.

There are only two other supporting actresses this century who won Critics’ Choice, lost the Golden Globe, and missed the BAFTAs entirely: Virginia Madsen (Sideways) and Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone). Neither won the Oscar.

However, Madigan’s Actor Award win gives her crucial momentum heading into final Oscar voting (February 26-March 5). SAG-AFTRA members make up the largest voting bloc of the Academy, and their preferences often signal Oscar outcomes, particularly in acting categories.

Taylor remains a formidable threat. As the only nominee to appear in a Best Picture frontrunner (One Battle After Anotherleads the Oscar race), she benefits from the film’s overall dominance. The Paul Thomas Anderson epic broke the Actor Awards’ record for most nominations with seven nods. Taylor won the Golden Globe and landed all four major televised precursors (Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Actor Awards) as a nominee.

Mosaku’s BAFTA win on a night when Sinners performed strongly overall cannot be discounted either, especially given her status as a respected British actress and the fact that nearly every acting Oscar winner since 2000 has won either BAFTA or the Actor Award.

What’s Next for Gladys

Director Zach Cregger has hinted at a possible Weapons prequel exploring Aunt Gladys’ murky backstory, though the project is in early development and Cregger is not yet confirmed to return. New Line Cinema is reportedly in talks.

When asked about reprising the role, Madigan told Entertainment Weekly: “In this business, nothing’s real till it’s real. I just had such a great time working with Zach and being inside that brain of his. That’s really the gift of how the movie came out. But, you know, I love Gladys, so I’ll leave it at that.”

With WeaponsMadigan is experiencing what she called a “late career renaissance” that has brought her back into the spotlight after years of what felt like exile. The 98th Academy Awards will air March 15 on ABC, with final Oscar voting closing March 5.