Who is the best supporting actor Oscar winner? We rank them.

A newcomer will soon join the hallowed halls of the Oscars' best supporting actor category. Before the March 15 awards, we rank the best of the best.

There are some truly wonderful good guys among the Oscars' best supporting actor performances this century. There’s also a Nazi villain, a band director from hell and even a Joker.

At the Academy Awards, the category has had its share of antagonists, like Robert Downey Jr.'s vengeful politico in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” or Javier Bardem's psycho killer in “No Country for Old Men." Two-time best actor winner – and recent Actor Awards honoree – Sean Penn could be a good fit for this dastardly crew as the antagonist of "One Battle After Another." He's one of the guys up this year for the supporting actor Oscar alongside his costar Benicio Del Toro, Stellan Skarsgård ("Sentimental Value"), Delroy Lindo ("Sinners") and Jacob Elordi ("Frankenstein").

In anticipation of someone else joining the canon in 2026 – or Del Toro getting his second win in the category – we’re ranking all the best supporting actor winners of the past 25 years.

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In Quentin Tarantino's Western revenge flick, Waltz conjures a nifty bit of chemistry with Jamie Foxx for a different sort of buddy dynamic: King Schultz (Waltz) is a German dentist and bounty hunter who frees the enslaved man Django (Foxx) and then they partner up on a rescue mission to Mississippi to find Django's wife.