Oscars 2026: Sean Penn wins ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for ‘One Battle After Another’
Sean Penn has won the award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the 98th edition of the Oscars.
Penn took home the award after beating out his fellow nominees Jacob Elordi, Delroy Lindo, Stellan Skarsgård, and his One Battle After Another co-star Benicio del Toro.
The actor was hugely celebrated for his role as Colonel Steven J Lockjaw in the Paul Thomas Anderson epic, who becomes the essential villain of the film as the militant figure at odds with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson.
The actor’s win at the ceremony comes after his sixth nomination in total and his third win, making him the seventh person in history to win three acting Oscars.
This is Penn’s first time taking home the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ prize, though, having previously won ‘Best Actor’ for Mystic River in 2003 and Milk in 2008.
If anything, a One Battle After Another win felt guaranteed; the only question is whether it would be Penn or del Toro walking away with the prize. No offence intended to the rest of the nominees, but as awards season progressed, it felt increasingly like a two-horse race based on the buzz alone.
In the end, Penn had the most momentum among the Academy’s voters, joining the elusive club of three-time winners, and there’s no reason why he can’t go one step further and join Katharine Hepburn in the future as only the second four-time Oscar-winning actor ever.
While his castmate may have stolen just as many scenes in Anderson’s urgent, timely, and blackly comedic political thriller, Penn’s Lockjaw is a force of nature who dominates every scene he appears in.
It seemed unlikely that ‘Best Supporting Actor‘ would be one of the categories to deliver a major upset, and it wasn’t. Penn fully deserves his third statue, and it could be a sign of things to come for One Battle After Another in the major categories as the night progresses.
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.