Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix among winners.
The 26th edition of the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards had some of Hollywood’s beloved veterans and dynamic newcomers take home that gleaming trophy for performances in some of favorite shows and films of the year. This year’s SAG awards made history as Parasite became the first foreign-language movie to win SAG’s coveted best ensemble prize on Sunday night. This proved to be a step in the right direction for Hollywood as the awards industry has recently been under increased scrutiny for lack of diversity in its awards.
Last week, the Oscar’s nominations prompted a reemergence of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag from 2016, and the BAFTA actors’ nominations did not include a single person of color.
Bong Joon Ho’s socioeconomic thriller Parasite pulled the rug out from under Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - a Quentin Tarantino classic with an all-star cast. It may be the beginnings of a revamp the film industry so desperately needs. Excluding the pleasant surprise win for the South-Korean drama, the film awards played out fairly predictably.
Joaquin Phoenix added yet another trophy to his shelf this awards season as the Joker star received the prize for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Film, beating out a familiar circle of Hollywood royalty including Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver.
In his acceptance speech, Phoenix dedicated his win to much-adored fellow Joker actor, the late Heath Ledger whom Phoenix not only called his favorite actor, but someone “I’m standing here on the shoulders of.”
In the leading female actress category, Renee Zellweger predictably won for her Outstanding Performance in Rupert Goold’s Judy.
In addition to Judy Garland, the Bridget Jones’s Diary star thanked her former co-star Tom Cruise, who starred alongside her in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire for which she earned her first SAG award nomination for.
Big Little Lies star Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress for her work in Marriage Story, making her the champion of this awards season.
Another anticipated victory on Sunday was Brad Pitt’s Supporting Actor trophy for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The international heartthrob once again had people smitten with his witty acceptance speech in which he joked about his relationship status: “I’m going to add this to my Tinder profile.”
Pitt’s adored ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, also took home an emerald trophy last night for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series for her work in Apple TV’s The Morning Show. But, the Internet was focused on something much more than the iconic ex-couple’s triumphs. The actors were photographed together backstage in a warm embrace that brought us right back to 2003. After their brief reunion, Pitt lingeringly gripped on to Aniston’s wrist as she attempted to head back into the celebrity-filled crowd. Let’s not get our hopes up, but could these obvious sparks lead to the celebrity super-couple rekindling? The ceremony was topped off with Netflix’s history of the British Royal family, The Crown being crowned as Best Drama Ensemble. Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, won Best Male Actor for the first time - after six nominations - for HBO’s fantasy-drama Game of Thrones.
Although SAG is the only televised awards of the four guilds representing actors, writers, directors and producers, it’s not the most reliable barometer in terms of predicting the Academy Awards. So, do this year’s SAG awards actually give us any insight into the potential victories at the Oscars? The nominations are in; now all there is to do is predict which of these gifted performers will take home that 24-karat gold-plated statuette next month
