Best Supporting Actress saw competition between five performers from four films: Best Picture nominees The Color Purple, in which Celie Johnson experiences heartache after heartache in the rural South at the turn-of-the-century, and Prizzi's Honor, in which mob hitman Charley Partanna falls in love with a freelance hitwoman; Twice in a Lifetime, a grounded, wonderful drama in which a family man ends his 30-year marriage after falling for a barmaid and the fallout from it; and the curiously dull melodrama Agnes of God, in which a court-appointed psychiatrist investigates the state of mind of a novitiate accused of murdering her newborn child. Much as Supporting Actor went to a long-beloved veteran, this one went to a legacy:
Unfair to characterize the win as such? Let's talk performances:
