United States: Oppenheimer has won three awards at the 30th Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards.
At the glamorous celebration in Los Angeles, Christopher Nolan’s portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, took home the best movie cast prize, which has historically been a reliable indicator of the Oscars.
Best movie actor went to Cillian Murphy, who portrays the title role; best supporting actor went to co-star Robert Downey Jr., who plays his sworn nemesis.
Since the union staged its longest-ever strike last year, SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 professionals in the entertainment business, had not hosted a gala before.
For the first time for a Tinseltown event, the show was also streamed live on Netflix.
As the strike was ready to start, Kenneth Branagh, who plays Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the movie Oppenheimer, recalled how the actors of the movie staged a walkout from the London premiere last July.
Entering the Oscars on March 11, Oppenheimer is the clear favourite for best picture, having already won awards at the British Academy Film Awards and the Golden Globes.
The movie has received 13 Oscar nominations overall, more than Yorgos Lanthimos’s steampunk fantasy Poor Things, which has received 11 nominations. The film is nominated for best director, best actor, and best supporting actor.
The final Oscar winners were predicted by all five of the top prizes at the last two SAG awards.
Other winners were Da’Vine Joy Randolph for best supporting actress in The Holdovers and Lily Gladstone for best actress in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Barbra Streisand, who has won ten Grammys and two Oscars, was honoured with a lifetime achievement award for her six-decade career in show business.
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