In the 31 years of the Actor Awards, formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild Awards, no movie has received more than five nominations.
Along with a nod for the guild’s top award, best ensemble, the cast of One Battle After Another was showered with nominations for Leonardo DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and its stunt performers.
Usually, to win best picture at the Oscars, a movie needs a SAG ensemble nomination. Only four films in the last three decades have managed the feat without that. Among the films that missed the cut this year were Sentimental Value, Wicked: For Good and Train Dreams.
Sinners had an especially good result. Along with a best male actor nod for Michael B Jordan, supporting actors Miles Caton and Wunmi Mosaku were both nominated. It collected five nominations in total.
In television, Apple’s The Studio, HBO’s White Lotus and Netflix’s Adolescence led the nominees.
Historically, the Actor Awards have been one of the strongest Oscar indicators. Actors make up the largest branch of the film academy, and, in the past, individual SAG nominees have overlapped with the Oscar field at a rate of roughly four out of five. The Actor Awards are presented by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
That means the nominees announced today may closely resemble those headed to the Oscars. They are:
In the supporting male actor category, the nominees are: Del Toro, Penn, Caton, Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) and Paul Mescal (Hamnet).
Snubbed altogether was Joachim Trier’s acclaimed Norwegian drama Sentimental Value. Both Renate Reinsve, in lead female actor, and Stellan Skarsgård, for supporting male actor, have been viewed as shoo-ins. Many analysts have even considered Skarsgård the favourite to win. With more than 122,000 voting members, the actors guild has tended to skew more populist and the guild often shies away from non-English language nominees.
Membership in the academy, meanwhile, has grown increasingly international. Along with Sentimental Value, movies like the Iranian revenge drama It Was Just an Accident and the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent should have greater success come Oscar nominations on January 22.
There have been some prominent differences between SAG and the Oscars. Last year, Chalamet won best male actor but lost to Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) at the Oscars. The papal drama Conclave took best ensemble, but Sean Baker’s Anora won best picture at the Academy Awards.
The Actor Awards will take place this Sunday.
