The Screen Actors Guild Awards, or SAG Awards, are known as an important predictor for the Academy Awards, or Oscars.
On Sunday night in Los Angeles, the film Everything Everywhere All at Once was a big winner at the SAG Awards.
Three actors from the film won awards. In addition, the group of actors in the film won the award for best cast.
The actors who won were Michelle Yeoh for leading female actor; Jamie Lee Curtis for supporting female actor and Ke Huy Quan for supporting male actor.
Yeoh is the first Asian actress to win the award. She is from Malaysia. She acted in many films in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s. Movie fans in other parts of the world learned about Yeoh when she appeared in a James Bond film in 1997.
Quan is a Vietnamese American actor who became known in the 1980s when he was a boy. Quan was in the famous films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Goonies. As he grew older, he was not able to get many more acting roles and mostly dropped out of the business.
Jamie Lee Curtis is 64 years old and the daughter of two famous Hollywood stars: Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. It was her first SAG nomination. She said: “I’m 64 years old and this is amazing.”
Other actors in the group noted Curtis’ award and joked that not all the actors in the film were Asian.
The movie was written and directed by the team known as “The Daniels.” They are Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
The actors of Everything Everywhere All at Once spoke about how Hollywood is now recognizing more Asian actors and offering more opportunities.
Yeoh held her award and said: “This is not just for me. It’s for every little girl that looks like me.”
Quan said he left acting “because there were so few opportunities.” He looked around at the other Asian actors and said, “the landscape looks so different now.”
James Hong is also a member of the cast. He is 94. He talked about old Hollywood movies when white actors would play Asian people. He said they wore makeup to look Asian, “because the producers said the Asians were not good enough…but look at us now!”
The other big winners on Sunday were Brendan Fraser for the film The Whale and Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Bateman and Jessica Chastain for their work in different television programs.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is nominated for 11 Academy Awards. “The Daniels,” Kwan and Scheinert, are nominated for best picture, best directing and best original screenplay. Four of the actors are nominated, including Yeoh for best actress, Curtis and Stephanie Hsu for best supporting actress and Quan for best supporting actor.
Many of the SAG Awards voters are the same ones who vote for the Academy Awards. That is why people say it predicts the winners of the Academy Awards.
Last year, for example, many Oscar winners also won SAG Awards. The Oscars ceremony will be held on March 12 in Los Angeles, California.
I’m Dan Friedell.
Dan Friedell adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on a report by the Associated Press.
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Words in This Story
cast –n. the entire group of actors in a film or theater production
landscape –n. the different features of a piece of land, such as hills, grass and trees; also used to discuss an environment such as work or business
original –adj. not a copy but created as something new
screenplay –n. the script and writing that is the basis for a movie or television program