Award winners are determined by the roughly 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest union of actors, whereas Oscar winners are determined by the roughly 9,500 voting members of the film Academy. About 86 percent of Oscar voters are not actors, though the Acting Branch still is the biggest one.
If Murphy can beat Giamatti in SAG-AFTRA (on the heels of a best actor BAFTA win), it’s hard to imagine that he won’t win it with the Academy.
As for the best actress race, it has long looked like Poor Things’ Emma Stone and Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone. Stone recently won the BAFTA Award, for which Gladstone was not even nominated, so Gladstone needed SAG Award win to at least create the appearance that it is still a toss-up.
She got it, making history by becoming the first Native American to ever win a SAG Award for an individual performance.
When the acting winners of SAG and the Academy have differed in recent years, it has often been a situation in which the more diverse guild rewarded person of color, whereas the Academy did not.
Recent examples include the SAG Award going to Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but the Oscar going to Anthony Hopkins for The Father;
the SAG Award going to Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but the Oscar going to Frances McDormand for Nomadland;
the SAG Award going to Denzel Washington for Fences but the Oscar going to Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea;
the SAG Award going to Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation but the Oscar going to Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies;
the SAG Award going to Viola Davis for The Help but the Oscar going to Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady.
Yet, in each of the last two years, the SAG Awards and the Oscars chose the same four winners, including two people of color in each year.
At the BAFTA awards, Stone and Gladstone did not have to compete against each other. And at the BAFTA and SAG awards, Stone and Gladstone did not have to compete against someone else with whom they are currently competing on Oscar ballots: the star of best picture Oscar nominee Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra Hüller.
Will Hüller pull votes from Stone or Gladstone, or perhaps even beat them both. That would be odds-defying upset.
Three performers have earned acting Oscars without having won the Critics Choice, BAFTA or SAG awards. Marcia Gay Harden won best supporting actress for 2000’s Pollock, Denzel Washington won best actor for 2001’s Training Day and Adrien Brody won best actor for 2002’s The Pianist.
The supporting acting Oscar categories are locked down. The SAG award for best supporting actor went to Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer and for best supporting actress went to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, as has every major awards ceremony.
