Madigan also previously made Academy Awards headlines for refusing to applaud Elia Kazan’s honorary acceptance speech at the 1999 Oscars.

Aunt Gladys is an Oscar winner: *Weapons star *Amy Madigan wins first Academy Award 40 years after prior nomination

Madigan also previously made Academy Awards headlines for refusing to applaud Elia Kazan's honorary acceptance speech at the 1999 Oscars.

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March 15, 2026 7:31 p.m. ET

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Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys in 'Weapons'. Credit:

Quantrell Colbert/Warner Bros.

No need for snapped twigs here. Amy Madigan, the actress behind the standout *Weapons* character Aunt Gladys, has won her first Oscar all on her own.

The veteran actress earned her first Academy Award at Sunday night's ceremony, bagging her first Oscar at age 75, over 40 years after her only prior nomination for 1985's *Twice in a Lifetime*. The stretch marks the longest between individual nominations for any actress in history.

Beating out stiff competition from the likes of Teyana Taylor (*One Battle After Another*), Wunmi Mosaku (*Sinners*), and *Sentimental Value*'s Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Madigan's win also marked a landmark victory for the horror genre, which the Academy rarely honors with competitive statuettes.

Amy Madigan wins Best Supporting Actress for 'Weapons' at 2026 Oscars.

Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty

"This is great!" Madigan said after taking the stage inside Los Angeles' Dolby Theatre, laughing as she accepted her statuette. "First and foremost, I just have to thank Zach Cregger, our writer and director. He just wrote a dream part and let me grab it by the throat, and we had a ball!"

She also named her fellow nominees and praised their talents, before admitting that her knees were shaking as she stood on stage and thanked her longtime husband, fellow actor Ed Harris.

"Most of all, I want to thank my beautiful daughter Lily and her husband," Madigan said. "Most important is my beloved Ed, who's been with me forever, and that's a long ass time. None of this would mean anything if he wasn't by my side. Thank you very much, I'm very overwhelmed."

Madigan's role as Aunt Gladys, an unsettling (and chaotically styled) witch, stole the show in last year's Cregger-directed horror hit *Weapons*. Inspiring countless Halloween costumes and memes, Madigan also won notable critical praise for her work in the film that went on to earn $270 million globally on a reported budget of under $40 million.

"It's really nice because I felt my work is really good in this piece. I've been doing it a long time, so to get something that's this gratifying and people like it...it's fun," Madigan previously told ** of garnering significant praise for *Weapons*. "It's given me a good giggle, but as you're going up, you could come down just as quickly. So you have to take it with a grain of salt."

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In addition to her prior nomination, Madigan made headlines at the 1999 Oscars ceremony, where she and her husband, Harris, were seen on camera refusing to applaud that year's Honorary Award recipient, Elia Kazan.

Following an introduction by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, stars like Warren Beatty and Kathy Bates were seen standing to clap for Kazan, though Madigan was pictured crossing her arms with disdain.

"Yeah, there was no way we were going to do that. No way," Madigan explained of the moment, years later.

Ed Harris and Amy Madigan at 1999 Oscars.

She referenced Kazan's House Un-American Activities Committee testimony in 1952, which occurred amid the blacklisting of several Hollywood figures who were, at the time, suspected of being communists during the Red Scare.

"My father, who’s not with us anymore, he was a political analyst and a journalist, and he was working on Capitol Hill when McCarthyism was going on, and it really, really affected him deeply," she continued. "And yeah, that whole thing was really bringing it back to me. I was like, 'Nope.'"

Madigan's other popular projects include the 1989 hit *Field of Dreams *and the John Candy comedy *Uncle Buck*, released the same year.

*See the full list of Oscars 2026 winners.*

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Source: “EW Academy”