My top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in movie history span the years 1973-1993. These acting performances that make up my top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in movie history are such a part of my personal cultural experiences! My top 5 Academy Award
Winners for Best Supporting Actor in movie history are in chronological order. Do you agree with my choices or do you have your own favorites?

Top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in Movie History Selection Number 1: John Houseman as Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. in The Paper Chase (1973)

Professor Kingsfield is one of the great movie characters of all time if you ask me and Houseman definitely deserved to be one of the Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor. In the movie, he comes across as such an iconic legal mind, and he drove first year law student James Hart batty in his contracts law class to the point of Hart being obsessed with him. This caused friction between him and his girlfriend Susan Field (played wonderfully by The Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner), who happens to be Kingsfield's daughter. One of the funniest movie scenes I've ever witnessed happens when Hart calls Kingsfield a S.O.B. in class. I feel like I'm going through a school year in just a couple of hours as I watch this movie!

Top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in Movie History Selection Number 2: Robert De Niro as Don Vito Coreleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando have the distinction of being the only tandem to win an Academy Award for playing the same role. In The Godfather, Part II, we see a younger Don Vito Corleone begin his rise to power after starting out as an immigrant to New York's Little Italy, escaping Sicily by the skin of his teeth as a child. De Niro shows real shrewdness and vitality in his role. The Godfather, Part II is also one of my top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Picture, which you can read my whole list at this Associated Content article.

Top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in Movie History Selection Number 3: Jack Nicholson as Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (1983)

I'm normally not a fan of romantic comedies, but Terms of Endearment has a number of great performances including those of Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway and Debra Winger as her daughter Emma. Nicholson's
Academy Award Winning role for Best Supporting Actor as the womanizing ex-astronaut is really interesting
because he goes years in the film without really having any impact on Aurora as her next door neighbor, but you know, you just can't keep "Jack" from having an impact eventually. Nicholson's performance in this film also makes Terms of Endearment one of my top 10 Jack Nicholson movies, which you can read about at Associated Content here.

Top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in Movie History Selection Number 4: Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas (1990)

Goodfellas is much more different in scope than the Godfather movies in that it shows just how unseemly and immoral mobsters can be. The romanticism isn't there in Goodfellas as it is with Francis Ford Coppola's mobster films, but it's one heck of a period piece with a wonderful narrative that spans many years. Joe Pesci really puts the hook in me as Tommy De Vito, who is as lacking in morals, values, and conscience as any mobster I've ever seen portrayed on film.

Top 5 Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in Movie History Selection Number 5: Tommy Lee Jones as Marshall Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive (1993)

Two years earlier, Jones was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Clay Shaw in JFK, which he definitely deserved to win, but he lost out to Jack Palance for his role in that vastly inferior film City Slickers in what I recall as being deemed by some at the time as a sympathy vote for the aging actor. But Jones' role as the relentless pursuer of Dr. Richard Kimble (played by Harrison Ford) mainly around Chicago really helped make the film quite an adventurous and thrilling experience.

Online source for my Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actor in movie history that helped me verify dates and exact character names:

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Supporting_Actor, Wikipedia

Roy Barnes