Oscars 2013: Richard Corliss’ Picks – Best Supporting Actress

TIME critic Richard Corliss reveals his pick for Best Supporting Actress. Share your pick!

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Universal Pictures

Nominees

Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Weaver, 66, a virtual unknown outside Australia until her well-earned nomination as the crime-family mom in Animal Kingdom two years ago, plays a more domesticated, less domineering mother (Bradley Cooper’s) in Silver Linings Playbook, which became the first movie since Reds in 1982 to place finalists in all four Acting categories. Adams, 38, scored her fourth Supporting Actress Oscar nomination (so far without a win) by triumphing over the Academy’s chilly reception to the critics groups’ super-favorite The Master. Hunt, 49, who plays the caring sex surrogate to chipper invalid and iron-lung resident John Hawkes, won Best Actress the only other time she was nominated, 15 years ago, for the harried single mom on a road trip with an obsessive-compulsive writer (Jack Nicholson, also a winner) and a gay guy (Greg Kinnear) in As Good As It Gets. That romantic comedy received seven Oscar nominations; The Sessions, another indie fave of critics, got only one — hers — and will top out there.

(Watch: Oscars 2013: Great Performances)

The only plausible competition for Hathaway is Field, 66, a two-time Oscar laureate for Norma Rae in 1980 and Places in the Heart five years later — when she startlingly led off her acceptance speech by paraphrasing a line from Norma Rae: “You like me! You really like me!” Hollywood still likes the erstwhile Flying Nun, who is a feisty treat as Mary Todd Lincoln, and who’s been campaigning to the Academy electorate as charmingly and doggedly as Michelle Obama for healthier snacks. But Field will likely be sitting when Hathaway, 30, strides on stage to accept her award for losing 20 pounds, having her head shaved and incanting, in a single shot, “I Dreamed a Dream.” Hathaway has already taken the Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA trophies and looks Oscar-unstoppable. This is the year when the thin lady sings: “Thank you.”

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