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With tight races for Lead Actor and Lead Actress, suspense ran high before Netflix‘s two-hour no-longer ad-free 31st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday night, where swearing was allowed. The SAG Awards 2025 was hosted by Kristen Bell (also a nominee this year for her show “Nobody Wants This”), streamed live globally from the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall.
More often than not, SAG winners repeat at the Oscars. Of the top five SAG prizes (Ensemble Cast, Leading Actress, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor) four of last year’s winners also went on to win the Academy Award. Eventual Best Picture winner “Oppenheimer” led the field with wins for Best Cast, Male Actor in a Leading Role (Cillian Murphy) and Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert Downey Jr.), which repeated at the Oscars.
But Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), who made history as the first Indigenous SAG winner for Best Actress, went on to lose the Oscar to Emma Stone (“Poor Things”).
This year the SAG Awards spread the love. The surprise of the night among the motion picture winners was Timothée Chalamet’s Leading Actor win for “A Complete Unknown.” Chalamet thanked his mother, and said that over 5 1/2 years “he poured everything I had into playing this incomparable artist Bob Dylan…I am in pursuit of greatness, I want to be one of the greats.”
This marks Chalamet’s first win for “A Complete Unknown.” Before this, “The Brutalist” star Adrien Brody took the Drama Golden Globe, the Critics Choice, and the BAFTA, beating “Conclave” star Ralph Fiennes on his home turf. “The Brutalist” and “Wicked” won nothing at the Spirits or SAG. But Brody and director Brady Corbet could still win on March 2, and both films will collect some craft wins, along with “Conclave.”
We will not know the winners until the Oscar show on ABC March 2.
At SAG, “Conclave” won Cast in a Motion Picture, which will correlate to strong support from the actors branch. While the SAG Awards are more mainstream than the Oscars, “Conclave” also won Best Film at the BAFTAs, which reveals strong international support, as well as Adapted Screenplay at the USC Scripters. Director Edward Berger did not receive a Directing Oscar nomination.
At the Oscars, “Conclave” goes head to head with “Anora,” which won the Critics Choice award and Indie Spirits as well as guild prizes at the WGA, DGA, and PGA. Those wins are indicative of a likely Oscar Best Picture victory.
The Best Actress Oscar race is also still competitive. Demi Moore won the Golden Globe, CCAs and gave another strong speech at SAG, but “Anora” star Mikey Madison won both the BAFTAs and Spirits: both groups have considerable overlap with Oscar voters.
In her speech, Moore recalled getting her actor’s equity card in 1978. “It gave me meaning and purpose and direction. I was on my own, no blueprint for life. I knew nothing about acting, watched and listened…Don’t lose sight of the human connections. That’s the work we do.”
Supporting Actor and Actress SAG wins went to the frontrunners who are sweeping the awards groups, Zoe Saldaña for “Emilia Pérez” and Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain.” “I am proud to be part of a union that allows me to be who I am,” said Saldaña. “I believe everybody has the right to be who they are.”
Their wins on Oscar night seem inevitable.
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