Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress winners who played real people

The supporting actor awards weren’t added until 1936, and the second-ever winner was Schildkraut. He played Captain Alfred Dreyfus in Best Picture winner “The Life of Emile Zola.” It was a huge movie and performance at the time, but now he’s more a historical footnote.

Brennan was the king of supporting actors. He won Best Supporting Actor three times. In fact, he won three of the first five awards in this category. The last time he won, it was for playing Judge Roy Bean in “The Westerner.”

“Viva Zapata!” is a film about Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapata, who is naturally played by…Marlon Brando. Well, in the role of Emilio’s brother Eufemio, Quinn won an Oscar. Quinn also happened to actually be Mexican. This is definitely one of those cases where a supporting performer overshadows the star, which wasn’t easy with Brando involved.

Hey, that’s a familiar name. Quinn won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1956, four years after winning for “Viva Zapata!.” This time he is playing Paul Gauguin, the artist and friend of Vincent Van Gogh. Kirk Douglas stars as Van Gogh in “Lust for Life,” but Quinn took home the Oscar.

Ustinov was arguably the definitive Hercule Poirot on screen, or at the very least he played him the most. He won his first Oscar for playing a historical figure, though. We’re talking really historical. Ustinov played Lentulus Batiatus in “Spartacus.” Now, historical record from the BC era is perhaps not letter perfect, but there’s enough for us to be confident Lentulus was a real person. We don’t know if he provided comic relief like Ustinov did.

“All the President’s Men” managed to make newspaper research gripping. Now, most people these days probably think of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein. However, Robards won himself an Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, who was editor of “The Washington Post.”

Robards didn’t just win back-to-back Best Supporting Actor Oscars. He won them both for playing real people — people from the world of print, as well. After playing Ben Bradlee, Robards played the writer Dashiell Hammett in “Julia.” Those are some pretty daunting figures to portray, but Robards clearly did it with aplomb.

Ngor is one of the most interesting Oscar winners. He wasn’t an established actor and was primarily a doctor. In fact, playing Dith Pran in “The Killing Fields” was his first acting role. He was so well received that he won an Academy Award.

“Ed Wood” is a Tim Burton movie for people who don’t like “Tim Burton movies.” Also, it’s for people who do like “Tim Burton movies” as well. Landau plays Bela Lugosi, who rose to fame playing Dracula. The veteran actor really stepped into the role with aplomb, winning a competitive category in 1994.

“Iris” is one of those Oscar winners that time has forgotten, but that’s no knock on Jim Broadbent. This is just one of those “Oh yeah, he won an Oscar for that movie” situations. Did you even know “Iris” was about real people? Broadbent plays Iris Murdoch’s husband John Bayley, a British professor.

“Adaptation” is a head trip of a movie. Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into the script as a character, and then also made up a twin brother named Donald. Also, the script is credited to Charlie and Donald even though, again, Donald isn’t real. That blends fact and fiction, but thanks to Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief,” we do know John Laroche was real. Cooper won his Oscar for playing him.

“The Fighter” is about real boxer Micky Ward, so his family is involved as well. Bale plays Micky’s half-brother Dicky Eklund. Dicky was a boxer, but then he becomes Micky’s trainer. Oh, and he gets addicted to crack cocaine. Bale got the chance to do his whole physical transformation thing to play Dicky, which probably helped him win the Oscar.

Steven Spielberg likes himself a good historical drama. Daniel-Day Lewis won an Oscar for playing Abraham Lincoln for Spielberg. Rylance won for playing Rudolf Abel in “Bridge of Spies.” Now, Abel’s real name was William Fisher, but Rudolf Abel was the pseudonym he took on in real life. It wasn’t a change made for the movie. Rylance is playing a real person.

Sure, “Green Book” winning Best Picture felt a little weird, but even if you didn’t like the movie, it’s hard to argue with Ali’s performance. He won his second Best Supporting Actor in three years, this time for playing jazz musician Don Shirley.

There was some category fraud from “Judas and the Black Messiah,” as both Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield were nominated for Best Supporting Actor. If they were both supporting performances, who was it that they were supporting? That being said, Kaluuya is great as Fred Hampton. Also, he’s the real supporting part compared to Stanfield, so his win feels more sensible.

A woman didn’t win Best Supporting Actress for playing a real person until 1962. Alice Brady and Shelley Winters had played women based on real people, but the names were changed and the details massaged a little too much. Duke, though, is playing Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker.” Anne Bancroft also won Best Actress for playing the real Annie Sullivan in the same movie.

“Bonnie and Clyde” had quite the cast. The titular characters are played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Gene Hackman plays Clyde’s brother Buck. And yet, it’s Parsons, who plays Buck’s wife Blanche, who won an Oscar.

Robards was actually nominated for Best Supporting Actor again for “Melvin and Howard,” where he plays Howard Hughes. It’s based on the claims of Melvin Dummar, who says he saved Hughes in the desert in 1967 and was thus written into Hughes’ will to receive part of Hughes’ massive fortune. Steenburgen plays Lynda West-Dummar, Melvin’s wife. Indeed, Dummar was married to a Linda West from 1964 until 1967. Changing one letter isn’t enough for us to say she isn’t playing a real person.

“Reds” was a lengthy, meaty film, but Warren Beatty’s movie got a lot of love from the Academy. A lot of those nominations didn’t turn into wins, however. Stapleton finally won her first Oscar, though, for playing Emma Goldman. Stapleton also won an Emmy and a Tony in her career.

You know the Pigeon Lady from “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York?” What if we told you that she won an Oscar? It’s true! She played Bridget Fagan Brown in “My Left Foot,” which also won Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar for playing artist Christy Brown. Fricker became the first Irish woman to win an acting Oscar.

Dench is on screen in “Shakespeare in Love” for like two minutes. OK, so it was really about eight minutes. Nevertheless, she made a splash in her brief screen time as Queen Elizabeth I.

Lee Krasner isn’t the titular artist in “Pollock.” That didn’t hurt Harden, though. She played Krasner, who was also married to Jackson Pollock, in the film and won an Academy Award for it.

“A Beautiful Mind” won Best Picture, though it has not exactly stood the test of time. Mostly it seems to have an odd take on mental illness. In real life, Alicia Nash gave up on her career as a physicist to take care of her husband John and their son, both of whom were schizophrenic. Connelly won an Oscar for playing her.

Here’s a first: An actor winning an Oscar for playing another Oscar winner. In fact, Blanchett played the ultimate Oscar winner. In “The Aviator” she played Katharine Hepburn, who won two Academy Awards herself for playing real people.

Our second winner from “The Fighter,” Leo won for playing Alice Eklund-Ward, the very-Boston mother of Dicky and Micky. She unapologetically campaigned to win, and it evidently paid off.

Nyong’o was put through the wringer in her breakthough performance. “12 Years a Slave” is obviously a rough watch, but it was the kind of important bleak film that often gets Oscars love. Nyong’o did a great job as Patsey, though, and Patsey is mentioned in Solomon Northrup’s memoir.

Vikander is Swedish, but that’s close enough to Danish. She plays the artist Gerda Wegener in “The Danish Girl.” Vikander would go on to play Lara Croft, who is not real.

Janney is a beloved character actor, but she’s done a lot of her most beloved work on TV. Then, she got a chance to chew the scenery as LaVona Golden, Tonya Harding’s mother, in “I, Tonya.” Part of the narrative of the movie is trying to parse fact from fiction, but we do know Golden is real, and we do know Janney is a great actor who won an Oscar.