SAG Awards 2024: ‘Oppenheimer’ Dominates the Night

February 25, 2024

in USA

Reading Time: 4 mins read

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” scored three big wins at the 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday night, adding even more industry prizes to its formidable war chest.

The film’s top honor, the SAG Award for best ensemble, brought cast members, including Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt, to the stage. Their co-star Kenneth Branagh noted that they were last together in July, when they walked out of the biopic’s premiere in solidarity with the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“This is a full-circle moment for us,” Branagh said.

Thus far, “Oppenheimer” has won top prizes at the Golden Globes, BAFTA and Critics Choice Awards and is considered the front-runner for the best picture Oscar. Last year’s best-picture winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” also triumphed at the SAGs first, though only five of the last 10 ensemble winners have gone on to Oscar glory.

The SAG Awards have a much better track record when it comes to clarifying the individual acting races, since those winners have matched up exactly with the Oscars each of the last two years. In the competitive best actor race, “Oppenheimer” star Murphy triumphed over Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”) and Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), among others, for his performance as the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.

And though “Poor Things” star Emma Stone won the BAFTA for best actress last weekend, “Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone triumphed at SAG for her turn as an Osage woman whose family members are murdered by her husband (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his uncle (Robert De Niro).

In the supporting races, SAG honored Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who played a grieving school cook in “The Holdovers,” and Downey, who delivered a seething performance as a political operative in “Oppenheimer.” Both stars have dominated the season and will almost certainly cruise to Oscar-night victory.

“Why me, why now? Why do things seem to be going my way?” Downey joked in his latest acceptance speech, adding, “Unlike my fellow nominees, I will never grow tired from the sound of my voice.”

In her own speech, Randolph sought to inspire her fellow actors.

“How lucky are we to do what we do?” she said. “For every actor out there waiting for their chance, let me tell you that your life can change in a day.”

Elsewhere at the ceremony, Barbra Streisand accepted a lifetime achievement award with what seemed like a reference to the current world situation. Noting that Hollywood was built by studio chiefs like Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer, men who fled antisemitism in Eastern Europe, she said, “Now I dream of a world where such prejudice is a thing of the past.”

But the actress, filmmaker and singer focused mostly on her love of film, fondly recalling going to the movies at a theater near Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. “That make-believe world was much more pleasant than anything I experienced,” she said, explaining that she didn’t like reality. “I wanted to be in the movies.”

Later, as a working actress, she recalled, her first film, “Funny Girl” (1968), set the tone for her career, thanks to the director, William Wyler, and the cinematographer, Harry Stradling. “They had no problem with young women with opinions,” she added.

Here is the complete list of SAG winners.