Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
by andrewjocunning | created - 25 Aug 2017 | updated - 3 months ago | Public1. Jennifer Coolidge
Actress | A Mighty Wind
Jennifer Coolidge is a versatile character actress and experimental comedienne, best known for playing Stifler's mom in American Pie (1999).
She was born on August 28, 1961, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, to Gretchen (Knauff) and Paul Constant Coolidge, a plastics manufacturer. Young Coolidge was ...
2023: The White Lotus
2. Julia Garner
Actress | The Assistant
Julia Garner is an American actress and model. She has appeared in the films Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and played leading roles in Electrick Children (2012), We Are What We Are (2013) and Grandma (2015). She also ...
2022, 2020 & 2019: Ozark
3. Gillian Anderson
Actress | The X Files
Gillian Anderson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Rosemary Alyce (Lane), a computer analyst, and Homer Edward Anderson III, who owned a film post-production company. Gillian started her career as a member of an amateur actor group while at high school. In 1987, her love of the theatre took her to ...
2021: The Crown
4. Thandiwe Newton
Actress | Crash
Thandiwe Newton was born in London. She is the daughter of Zimbabwean mother Nyasha, a health-care worker from the Shona tribe, and British father Nick Newton, who worked as a lab technician. She lived in Zambia until political unrest caused her family to move back to the UK, where she lived in ...
2018: Westworld
5. Ann Dowd
Actress | Compliance
Ann Dowd was born on January 30, 1956 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA. She is an actress, known for Compliance (2012), Hereditary (2018) and Garden State (2004). She has been married to Lawrence Arancio since November 7, 1984. They have three children.
2017: The Handmaid's Tale
6. Maggie Smith
Actress | Gosford Park
One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor ...
2016 & 2012: Downton Abbey
7. Uzo Aduba
Actress | Orange Is the New Black
Aduba began earning recognition for her work in 2003, with a performance in "Translations of Xhosa" at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that won her a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Play. Her Broadway debut was in 2007 as Toby in "Coram Boy". She was...
2015: Orange is the New Black
8. Anna Gunn
Actress | Breaking Bad
An actress on both stage and screen, Anna Gunn has portrayed a vast array of complex and powerful characters throughout her career.
Anna grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico after her parents, Sharon (Peters) and Clemens Gunn, Jr., transplanted the family from Cleveland, Ohio to the Southwest in the late...
2014 & 2013: Breaking Bad
9. Margo Martindale
Actress | August: Osage County
Margo Martindale was born July 18, 1951 in Jacksonville, Texas, to Margaret (Pruitt) and William Everett Martindale, a lumber company owner and dog handler. She is the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. Margo attended Lon Marris College, and later transferred to University of ...
2011: Justified
10. Archie Panjabi
Actress | San Andreas
Archie is an Emmy Award winning British actress best known for her role as Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife, for which she was nominated for an Emmy three times in a row and went on to to be honored with a Golden Globe Nomination. She made her film debut in the critically acclaimed East Is East ...
2010: The Good Wife
11. Cherry Jones
Actress | The Village
Cherry Jones was born on November 21, 1956 in Paris, Tennessee, USA. She is an actress, known for The Village (2004), Signs (2002) and The Perfect Storm (2000). She has been married to Sophie Huber since 2015.
2009: 24
12. Dianne Wiest
Actress | The Birdcage
One of three children (she has two brothers, Greg and Don), Dianne Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA on 28 March 1946. Her original ambition was to be a ballerina, but she was bitten by acting bug after some stage work, most notably playing Desdemona to James Earl Jones' Othello on ...
2008: In Treatment
13. Katherine Heigl
Actress | One for the Money
Katherine Marie Heigl was born on November 24, 1978 in Washington, D.C., to Nancy Heigl (née Engelhardt), a personnel manager, and Paul Heigl, an accountant and executive. Her father is of German/Swiss-German and Irish descent, and her mother is of German ancestry. A short time after her birth, the...
2007: Grey's Anatomy
14. Blythe Danner
Actress | Meet the Parents
Blythe Danner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Katharine (Kile) and Harry Earl Danner, a bank executive. She has German, as well as English and Irish, ancestry. Danner studied acting and got her degree from Bard College and began her career in Boston theater companies. By 25, she won the ...
2006 & 2005: Huff
15. Drea de Matteo
Actress | The Sopranos
Andrea Donna de Matteo, called Drea (pronounced "dray"), was born on January 19, 1972 in Queens, New York, into an affluent family, the youngest of three children and the only girl. She is the daughter of Donna, a playwright and playwriting teacher at HB Studio in New York, and Albert A. De Matteo,...
2004: The Sopranos
16. Tyne Daly
Actress | Judging Amy
Tyne Daly was born on February 21, 1946 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Judging Amy (1999), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Cagney & Lacey (1981). She was previously married to Georg Stanford Brown.
2003: Judging Amy 1996: Christy
17. Stockard Channing
Actress | Practical Magic
One of Broadway and Hollywood's perennial and cleverer talents who tends to shine a smart, cynical light on her surroundings, Stockard Channing was born Susan Williams Antonia Stockard on February 13, 1944 in New York City to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother of Irish descent. Her parents ...
2002: The West Wing
18. Allison Janney
Actress | The Help
Allison Janney is an award-winning actress who has earned a solid reputation in stage productions and in many supporting roles on screen, and who more recently has become prominent by portraying one of the major characters in the popular TV series The West Wing (1999).
Entertainment Weekly magazine ...
2001 & 2000: The West Wing
19. Holland Taylor
Actress | Legally Blonde
Holland Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third-born (and last) daughter of her mother, Virginia (Davis), a painter, and the only child of her father, C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney. She spent her teen years in nearby Allentown, PA, where Holland got the nickname, "Penny Taylor" ...
1999: The Practice
20. Camryn Manheim
Actress | The Practice
Camryn grew up in Peoria, Illinois before moving to Long Beach California for middle school. She went on to receive a B.F.A. from U.C. Santa Cruz and then went on to earn a M.F.A from New York University in 1987. Her mother, Sylvia (Nuchow), was a schoolteacher, and her father, Jerry, was a math ...
1998: The Practice
21. Kim Delaney
Actress | NYPD Blue
Kim Delaney was born on November 29, 1958, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Roxborough. She is the daughter of Joan and Jack Delaney, who retired from Delphi Automotive, where he served as a committeeman for the United Auto Workers. She has four brothers: Ed Delaney and John Delaney...
1997: NYPD Blue
22. Julianna Margulies
Actress | ER
Julianna Margulies was born on June 8, 1966 in Spring Valley (near New York City), as the youngest of three daughters of Francesca (Goldberg), a teacher and dancer in American Ballet, and Paul Margulies, an advertising writer and philosopher. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (from Romania, ...
1995: ER
23. Leigh Taylor-Young
Actress | Soylent Green
Entrancing Leigh Taylor-Young was born on January 25, 1945, in Washington, D,C,. to a diplomat father and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the older sister of future actress Dey Young and writer/director Lance Young. She studied classical ballet and, following high school, attended ...
1994: Picket Fences
24. Mary Alice
Actress | The Matrix Revolutions
Mary Alice was born on December 3, 1936 in Indianola, Mississippi, USA. She was an actress, known for The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Awakenings (1990) and Malcolm X (1992). She died on July 27, 2022 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
1993: I'll Fly Away
25. Valerie Mahaffey
Actress | Jungle 2 Jungle
Valerie Mahaffey is an American character actress and producer. She began her career starring in the NBC daytime soap opera The Doctors (1979-81), for which in 1980 she was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.In 1992, Mahaffey won the Primetime ...
1992: Northern Exposure
26. Madge Sinclair
Actress | Coming to America
Madge Sinclair was born Madge Dorita Walters on April 28, 1938 in Kingston, Jamaica, married young and had two sons. Madge worked as a teacher in Jamaica until she was 30. She left her two boys with their father and moved in 1968 to New York City to be an actress.
She began modeling and later acted ...
1991: Gabriel's Fire
27. Marg Helgenberger
Actress | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Marg Helgenberger is an established dramatic actress whose prominence has been steadily increasing. Her work has been noted on stage, film and TV. Most of her career has been spent in dramatic roles on television, but she has also had a noteworthy presence in feature films.
Helgenberger earned a ...
1990: China Beach
28. Melanie Mayron
Director | Thirtysomething
Melanie Mayron was born on October 20, 1952 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She is a director and actress, known for Thirtysomething (1987), Girlfriends (1978) and Snapshots (2018).
1989: thirtysomething
29. Patricia Wettig
Actress | City Slickers
Three-time Emmy Award winner Patricia Wettig made a noticeable dramatic impact on late 1980s TV as wife and mom Nancy Weston on the award-winning series Thirtysomething (1987). Although her husband, actor Ken Olin, also co-starred on the series, they had different spouses on the show. Known for her...
1988: thirtysomething
30. Bonnie Bartlett
Actress | St. Elsewhere
Bonnie Bartlett grew up in Moline, Illinois. Her father E.E. was a failed Shakespearean actor who became an insurance salesman. Her mother Carrie was a homemaker. At an early age, Bonnie became determined to fulfill her father's failed acting career. She went to Northwestern University to study ...
1987 & 1986: St. Elsewhere
31. Betty Thomas
Self | Howard Stern
Betty Thomas was born July 27, 1947 in St. Louis, Missouri, graduating from Ohio University with a BA in fine arts. Initially sidetracked, Betty first taught school in Chicago but found herself restricted and needing more of an open forum for self-expression than a classroom. She found herself drawn...
1985: Hill Street Blues
32. Alfre Woodard
Actress | Star Trek: First Contact
Alfre Woodard was born on November 8, 1952 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the youngest of three children of Constance, a homemaker, and Marion H. Woodard, an interior designer. She was named by her godmother, who claimed she saw a vision of Alfre's name written out in gold letters. A former high school ...
1984: Hill Street Blues
33. Doris Roberts
Actress | Everybody Loves Raymond
Doris Roberts was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Ann (Meltzer) and Larry Green. She was raised in New York, and took her stepfather's surname. Roberts was a 20-year veteran of the Broadway stage before she began appearing steadily in character roles in film and on television during the 1970s. A ...
1983: St. Elsewhere
34. Nancy Marchand
Actress | The Sopranos
Nancy Marchand's mother, a pianist, sent her shy daughter to acting classes in hopes of breaking her out of her shell. As a student at Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon University), she studied the works of William Shakespeare and the other great playwrights and, upon graduation, set off for New York ...
1982, 1981, 1980 & 1978: Lou Grant
35. Kristy McNichol
Actress | The Pirate Movie
Actor Kristy McNichol is best known for her role as "Buddy" in the Spelling/Goldberg hit TV series Family (1976), where she won 2 Emmy awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe. McNichol began her career with guest appearances on such popular TV series as Starsky and Hutch, The Bionic Woman, Love...
1979 & 1977: Family
36. Ellen Corby
Actress | The Waltons
Ellen Corby was born Ellen Hansen on June 3, 1911, in Racine, Wisconsin. She played many uncredited bit parts from the late '20s through the '30s. Ellen would not be seen on the big screen again until 1945 in Cornered (1945). In 1946, she appeared in 14 films, although mostly in small, minor roles....
1976, 1975 & 1973: The Waltons
37. Joanna Miles
Actress | Judge Dredd
Joanna Miles, the Emmy Award-winning American actress, was born on March 6, 1940 in Nice, France to expatriate American abstract painter Jeanne Miles and French painter-museum curator Johannes Schiefer. Escaping the war, she was relocated to the United States in 1941. She graduated from the ...
1974: The Glass Menagerie
38. Jenny Agutter
Actress | Logan's Run
Jenny Agutter was born on December 20, 1952, in Taunton, Somerset, England, UK. The daughter of an army officer, she spent her childhood traveling and living in different countries. Her film career began at the age of 12 in East of Sudan (1964), which was quickly followed by The Magical World of ...
1972: The Snow Goose
39. Margaret Leighton
Actress | The Go-Between
Tall, reedy, thin-browed, light-haired British award-winning theatre actress Margaret Leighton was born in Worchestershire, England, on February 26, 1922, the daughter of a businessman. Expressing an early desire to act, she quit school at age 15 and auditioned and joined Sir Barry Jackson's ...
1971: Hamlet
40. Gail Fisher
Actress | Mannix
A classy, smart-looking African-American actress who broke racial barriers in 1970s Hollywood but suffered greatly in her private life years after her TV glory days, award-winning actress Gail Fisher was born on August 18, 1935, in Orange, New Jersey, the youngest of five children. Her father, a ...
1970: Mannix
41. Barbara Anderson
Actress | Ironside
Beautiful green-eyed Barbara Jeanne Anderson is best remembered on screen as the socialite- turned San Francisco police Officer Eve Whitfield in the first four seasons of the NBC police drama Ironside (1967), starring Raymond Burr. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of an enlisted ...
1968: Ironside
42. Agnes Moorehead
Actress | The Magnificent Ambersons
Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera ...
1967: The Wild Wild West
43. Lee Grant
Actress | In the Heat of the Night
Academy Award-winner Lee Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal on October 31, 1925 in Manhattan, New York City, to Witia (Haskell), a teacher and model, and Abraham Rosenthal, an educator and realtor. Her father was of Romanian Jewish descent, and her mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant. Lee ...
1966: Peyton Place
44. Ruth White
Actress | To Kill a Mockingbird
Ruth White was born on April 24, 1914 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress, known for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Hang 'Em High (1968). She died on December 3, 1969 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, USA.
1964: Little Moon of Alban
45. Glenda Farrell
Actress | Girl Missing
Glenda Farrell began as the archetypal wisecracking blonde in 1930s gangland films like Little Caesar (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Diminutive, grey-eyed and undeniably sassy, she was a seasoned performer long before Warner Brothers snapped her up as a contract player in 1929...
1963: Ben Casey
46. Pamela Brown
Actress | Cleopatra
Pamela Brown trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Her first appearance was as "Juliet" in "Romeo and Juliet" at Stratford-on-Avon in 1936. She followed this with a variety of roles for the Old Vic Company in London. She appeared on Broadway in the 1947 production of "The Importance ...
1962: Victoria Regina
47. Barbara Hale
Actress | Perry Mason
Barbara Hale was born on April 18, 1922 in DeKalb, Illinois, to Wilma (née Colvin) and Luther Ezra Hale, a landscape gardener. She had one sister, Juanita. As a young girl, she intended to major in art and drawing but to work her way through The Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, she began her ...
1959: Perry Mason
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