Amy Madigan wins Oscar for best supporting actress in ‘Weapons,’ 40 years after last nomination

By Canadian Press on March 15, 2026.

Amy Madigan won the Academy Award for best supporting actress Sunday for her role in the supernatural thriller “ Weapons,” 40 years after her last nomination.

Madigan embodied the role of Gladys, giving a phenomenally creepy portrayal of the great-aunt of a young boy whose classmates go missing overnight. She won the Critics’ Choice Award and Actor Award in the same category.

The last time she was nominated for an Oscar was for her role in 1985 family drama “Twice in a Lifetime,” setting a record for the longest gap between nominations for an actress.

“Gladys has surprised me, she’s getting a lot of love back,” Madigan said in her acceptance speech at the Annual Actor Awards. “I didn’t know y’all wanted to hang out with her.”

Her character is so integral to one of the movie’s biggest twists that she was kept out of the press tour and early marketing for the film so as to not give away any spoilers.

Some of Madigan’s most notable roles in her long career were in “Field of Dreams” and “Uncle Buck” in 1989. She has also acted in Broadway and off-Broadway productions.

“Opportunities (as an older actress) are less and you just hope that something finds you so you can find it,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “And I don’t take it for granted, because you can go up and then you can go all the way down, as we know.”

Madigan beat out other nominees Teyana Taylor in “One Battle After Another,” Wunmi Mosaku in “Sinners,” and Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in “Sentimental Value.” The category did not have a clear favorite ahead of this year’s ceremony, with a crowded field of nominees splitting the biggest awards of the season.

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For more coverage of the 2026 Oscars, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards.

Jaimie Ding, The Associated Press

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