British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor

The British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor is a discontinued annual award given by the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) to recognize the best supporting performance by an actor in a British independent film.

British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor
Awarded for	Best Supporting Actor
Country	United Kingdom
Presented by	BIFA
First award	2008
Final award	2021
Currently held by	Talid Ariss – After Love (2021)
Website	www.bifa.org.uk

From 2003 to 2007, only one award was presented for supporting performances named Best Supporting Actor/Actress. Since 2008, two categories named Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress are presented.

Actors Eddie Marsan and Sean Harris are the most nominated actors in this category since its creation in 2008 with three nominations each.

In July 2022, it was announced that the performance categories would be replaced with gender-neutral categories, with both Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress merging into the Best Lead Performance category. Additionally, a category named Best Joint Lead Performance was created for "two (or exceptionally three) performances that are the joint focus of the film, especially where performances share a large number of scenes and screen time".^[1]

Winners and nominees

Eddie Marsan has won for Vera Drake (2004) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008).

Leslie Phillips won for Venus (2006).

Toby Kebbell won for Control (2007).

John Henshaw won for Looking for Eric (2009).

Geoffrey Rush won for The King's Speech (2010).

Rory Kinnear won for Broken (2012).

Ben Mendelsohn won for Starred Up (2013).

Andrew Scott won for Pride (2014).

Brendan Gleeson won for Suffragette (2015).

Brett Goldstein won for Adult Life Skills (2016).

Alessandro Nivola won for Disobedience (2017).

Hugh Laurie won for The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019).

2000s

Best Supporting Actor/Actress

Year	Actor/Actress	Film	Character
2003 (6th) [2][3]	Susan Lynch	16 Years of Alcohol	Mary
	Shirley Henderson	Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself	Alice
	Sophie Okonedo	Dirty Pretty Things	Juliette
	Adrian Rawlins	Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself	Harbour
	Benedict Wong	Dirty Pretty Things	Guo Yi
2004 (7th) [4]	Eddie Marsan	Vera Drake	Reg
	Paddy Considine	My Summer of Love	Phil
	Romola Garai	Rory O'Shea Was Here	Siobhán
	Samantha Morton	Enduring Love	Claire
	Gary Stretch	Dead Man's Shoes	Sonny
2005 (8th) [5]	Rosamund Pike	The Libertine	Elizabeth Wilmot, Countess of Rochester
	Rob Brydon	A Cock and Bull Story	Captain Toby Shandy / Rob Brydon
	Tom Hollander	The Libertine	George Etherege
	Bill Nighy	The Constant Gardener	Sir Bernard Pellegrin
	Kelly Reilly	Mrs Henderson Presents	Maureen Ashford
2006 (9th) [6][7]	Leslie Phillips	Venus	Ian
	Martin Compston	Red Road	Stevie
	Joseph Gilgun	This Is England	Woody
	Stephen Graham		Combo
	Vanessa Redgrave	Venus	Valerie
2007 (10th) [8][9]	Toby Kebbell	Control	Rob Gretton
	Cate Blanchett	Notes on a Scandal	Sheba Hart
	Colin Firth	And When Did You Last See Your Father?	Blake Morrison
	Samantha Morton	Control	Deborah Curtis
	Armin Mueller-Stahl	Eastern Promises	Vor Semyon

Best Supporting Actor

Year	Actor	Film	Character
2008 (11th) [10][11]	Eddie Marsan	Happy-Go-Lucky	Scott
	Liam Cunningham	Hunger	Father Dominic Moran
	Ralph Fiennes	The Duchess	William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire
		In Bruges	Harry Waters
	Daniel Mays	Shifty	Chris
2009 (12th) [12][13]	John Henshaw	Looking for Eric	Meatballs
	Jim Broadbent	The Damned United	Sam Longson
	Michael Fassbender	Fish Tank	Connor
	Tom Hollander	In the Loop	Simon Foster
	Alfred Molina	An Education	Jack Mellor

2010s

Year	Actor	Film	Character
2010 (13th) [14][15]	Geoffrey Rush	The King's Speech	Lionel Logue
	Andrew Garfield	Never Let Me Go	Tommy D
	Bob Hoskins	Made in Dagenham	Albert Passingham
	Kayvan Novak	Four Lions	Waj
	Guy Pearce	The King's Speech	King Edward VIII
2011 (14th) [16][17]	Michael Smiley	Kill List	Gal
	Benedict Cumberbatch	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Peter Guilliam
	Tom Hardy		Ricki Tarr
	Eddie Marsan	Tyrannosaur	James
	Ezra Miller	We Need to Talk about Kevin	Kevin Khatchadourian
2012 (15th) [18][19]	Rory Kinnear	Broken	Bob Oswald
	Billy Connolly	Quartet	Wilfred "Wilf" Bond
	Domhnall Gleeson	Shadow Dancer	Connor McVeigh
	Cillian Murphy	Broken	Mike Kiernan
	Tom Wilkinson	The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel	Graham Dashwood
2013 (16th) [20][21]	Ben Mendelsohn	Starred Up	Neville Love
	John Arcilla	Metro Manila	Douglas Ong
	Rupert Friend	Starred Up	Oliver Baumer
	Jeff Goldblum	Le Week-End	Morgan
	Eddie Marsan	Filth	Clifford Blades
2014 (17th) [22][23]	Andrew Scott	Pride	Gethin Roberts
	Michael Fassbender	Frank	Frank
	Sean Harris	'71	Captain Sandy Brown
	Ben Schnetzer	Pride	Mark Ashton
	Rafe Spall	X+Y	Martin Humphreys
2015 (18th) [24][25]	Brendan Gleeson	Suffragette	Arthur Steed
	Luke Evans	High-Rise	Richard Wilder
	Domhnall Gleeson	Brooklyn	Jim Farrell
	Sean Harris	Macbeth	Macduff
	Ben Whishaw	The Lobster	The Limping Man
2016 (19th) [26][27]	Brett Goldstein	Adult Life Skills	Brendan
	Jamie Dornan	Anthropoid	Jan Kubiš
	Sean Harris	Trespass Against Us	Gordon Bennett
	Arinze Kene	The Pass	Ade
	Christopher Lloyd	I Am Not a Serial Killer	Bill Crowley
2017 (20th) [28][29]	Simon Russell Beale	The Death of Stalin	Lavrentiy Beria
	Steve Buscemi	The Death of Stalin	Nikita Khrushchev
	Woody Harrelson	Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Bill Willoughby
	Ian Hart	God's Own Country	Martin Saxby
	Sam Rockwell	Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Jason Dixon
2018 (21st) [30][31]	Alessandro Nivola	Disobedience	Dovid Kuperman
	Steve Buscemi	Lean on Pete	Del Montgomery
	Barry Keoghan	American Animals	Spencer Reinhard
	Evan Peters		Warren Lipka
	Dominic West	Colette	Henry Gauthier-Villars
2019 (22nd) [32][33]	Hugh Laurie	The Personal History of David Copperfield	Mr. Dick
	Chiwetel Ejiofor	The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind	Trywell Kamkwamba
	Peter Mullan	The Vanishing	Thomas Marshall
	Edlison Manuel Olbera Núñez	Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story	Young Carlos Acosta
	Bluey Robinson	Dirty God	Naz

2020s

Year	Actor	Film	Character
2020 (23rd) [34][35]	D'angelou Osei Kissiedu	Rocks	Emmanuel Omotoso
	Harris Dickinson	County Lines	Simon
	Barry Keoghan	Calm with Horses	Dymphna
	Alyy Khan	Mogul Mowgli	Bashir
	Merab Ninidze	The Courier	Oleg Penkovsky
2021 (24th) [36]	Talid Ariss	After Love	Solomon
	Richard Ayoade	The Souvenir Part II	Patrick
	Ciarán Hinds	Belfast	Pop
	Ray Panthaki	Boiling Point	Freeman
	Lucian River-Chauhan	Encounter	Jay Kahn

Multiple nominations

3 nominations Sean Harris Eddie Marsan

2 nominations Steve Buscemi Michael Fassbender Ralph Fiennes Domhnall Gleeson Barry Keoghan

See also

• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
• BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
• Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actor
• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
• Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role