Amy Madigan has won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, breaking a 40-year-old record in the process. The actress beat out Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (both Sentimental Value), Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), and Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) to claim the first prize of the night at the Oscars 2026. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given she also picked up the Actor Award (previously SAG Award) and Critics Choice Award in the same category.
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The win is notable for a few reasons, not least that it gives Madigan a very first Oscar win, 40 years after her first nomination (for Twice in a Lifetime). That’s the longest gap between first nomination and first win for an actress, beating the previous record of 32 years held by Geraldine Page (who won Best Actress for The Trip to Bountiful, having first been nominated for Hondo in 1954). Funnily enough, that record was set at the 1986 Oscars, the same year Madigan picked up her first (and before Weapons, only) nomination.
Amy Madigan Deserved The Oscar For Weapons
Weapons was one of the best horror movies of 2025, and Madigan is at the very center of that. She gives a delightfully creepy, sinister performance. The Zach Cregger movie finds a balance between being scary and silly, and that’s exactly what she does: there’s something quite terrifying about Aunt Gladys, especially as she conveys an ancient, rather unknowable sort of power, and yet it’s also over-the-top and comedic at the same time.
It’s the kind of performance the Oscars doesn’t recognize too often, because Weapons is the kind of movie that the Oscars doesn’t recognize too often. Only a handful of actors have won for horror movies, most recently Natalie Portman for Black Swan in 2011, making this feel long overdue.
Madigan also becomes only the second person to win Best Supporting Actress for a horror movie, with the other being Ruth Gordon for Rosemary’s Baby way back in 1969. Horror has had a bigger focus at the Oscars in the last couple of years, with The Substance picking up several nominations last year, and Sinners breaking the all-time Oscars nominations record in 2026.
Madigan’s award should not be seen as a career achievement, because her turn as Gladys is such a singular, memorable performance. Nonetheless, she has had an incredible career (with no sign of things slowing down), thanks to roles in Twice in a Lifetime, Love Letters, Field of Dreams, Uncle Buck, Gone Baby Gone, and many more. She is absolutely deserving, and it’s great to see her finally get the recognition she deserves.
Weapons is available to stream on HBO Max.
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Courtesy of Netflix / Shueisha
