Best Supporting Actress 2018

05. Michelle Williams in I Feel Pretty - Michelle Williams is one of the most talented actresses working today. If there was any justice, she would already have an Oscar. It's a good thing she'll have plenty of future chances, because she's surely not going to win it for this movie. I Feel Pretty is by no means a good movie. It's mediocre at best, but Williams work is still impossibly delightful. With the breathy voice and the airhead Barbie looks, Williams steals every scene she is in and makes this mediocre movie something you can actually sit through. Shining so brightly in such a dull movie is just further proof of how very talented she is.

04. Thomasin McKenzie in Leave No Trace - Director Debra Granik has an eye for talent. She gave Jennifer Lawrence her breakthrough role with Winter's Bone, and now it looks like she'll do the same with McKenzie. As the daughter of a survivalist with PTSD, McKenzie shines as a young woman who spent her life living in the wilderness trying to adapt to a normal life. She has very little dialogue throughout the movie, but you still feel every emotion she wants you to. Chemistry with movie dad Ben Foster surely helps, but this is a raw and authentic performance from a talent so young, that it makes you excited for what she will do next (hopefully she won't follow the same route as Lawrence and become a caricature of herself).

03. Claire Foy in First Man - First Man is basically a boys club. The entire cast is almost entirely male. Maybe that makes Foy even better, because she stands out in every single scene she is involved in. She's a supportive wife and mother, struggling with a husband who would rather go to the moon than stay on earth with his family. She is loving and tender, sassy and tough. She is a force to be reckoned with, and that scene where she goes to NASA headquarters to demand answers is a gem.

02. Ashlie Atkinson in Blackkklansman - There are quite a few stand out performances in Blackkklansman. Adam Driver and John David Washington are rightly getting awards season attention. But no one is talking about Atkinson, who plays the wife of a white supremacist / KKK member. She is at once a friendly and welcoming hostess, and a hateful, self-righteous bigot. It's a performance so layered, it feels so intimately authentic, that it will leave you feeling chilled to the bone. Her Connie is just as likely to bake you a pie with a smile on her face than she is to put a pipe bomb in your mail box. She's riveting to watch.

01. Elizabeth Debicki in Widows - Debicki is a revelation. In a star-studded cast that stars a who's who of the most talented character actors and movie stars, Debicki steals every single second of screen time she has. As an abused widow whose gone from her mom's house to her husband's house, she starts the movie as a lost and terrified little girl who doesn't know how to do anything on her own. Throughout the movie, we watch as she grows before our eyes, with the movies best (maybe only?) character arc. She learns to wield her sex appeal to get things done. She learns to read people's wants, needs and desires to get them to do what she needs them to. And she finally stands up for herself, and refuses to be anyone's punching bag. In the hands of a lesser actor, this role would have diminished to the background in such a talented cast. Instead, she becomes the best part of the movie.