83rd Academy Awards: Supporting Actress Nominees & Predictions

Amy Adams puts up a fight and gets her third Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination as Charlene Fleming in "The Fighter." Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her breakthrough role in "Junebug" and also as Sister James in "Doubt."

Helena Bonham Carter gets her second Oscar nomination for her role as Queen Elizabeth in "The King's Speech." Her first nomination was for Best Actress in "The Wings of the Dove." She's been typecast as the aristocrat early on and then as the weirdo as she broke her mold, but it's just proof that she can effectively fill a range of shoes.

Melissa Leo, like Helena Bonham Carter, was nominated for Best Actress in "Frozen River", but gets her second Oscar nomination as Alice Ward in "The Fighter." Leo and her co-star Amy Adams together provide a supporting duo that rockets "The Fighter" into a spectacular film. Too bad there wasn't an award for Best Supporting Tag-Team.

Hailee Steinfeld gets her first Oscar nomination with "True Grit", which also happens to be her first feature film. Her role as Mattie Ross has so far won more Best Supporting Actress awards on the Critics' Award circuit than any of her challengers.

Jacki Weaver gets her first Oscar nomination from her part in the breakthrough Australian Crime drama, "Animal Kingdom." She joins fellow thespian Geoffrey Rush (Best Supporting Actor Nominee) as being the only other Australian to be nominated for an Australian film.

Prediction: Jacki Weaver is really part of a powerful ensemble cast and seems more like necessary pick for an Academy with no best ensemble cast category. Melissa Leo and Amy Adams both prove a complex embodiment of antagonist and support for each of their unique roles in "The Fighter", while Helena Bonham Carter really plays up the supportive wife. In the end the biggest, most desired upset would be newcomer Hailee Steinfeld and an upset is what I predict. This firecracker came out of nowhere and blew everyone away; the academy would be doing a great disservice in not recognizing this raw talent. Besides, she should have been nominated for Best Actress instead.

Who do you think will win Best Supporting Actress? Play Pickem at Yahoo! Movies.