Alternative Film Guide

Among the winners of The Actor, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award, are Best Actress Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line, Best (faux) Supporting Actress Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener (Weisz is actually a lead character in the political drama, and is being recognized as such in Britain), Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, Best Supporting Actor Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man, and Crash won for Best Cast in a Motion Picture. Felicity Huffman, nominated for her gender-bending performance in Transamerica, lost that award to Witherspoon but won one as best actress in a TV comedy series (Desperate Housewives). Shirley Temple, the tap-dancing brat of numerous Fox films of the 1930s, won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Some may say that SAG’s selection of Crash as Best Cast in a Motion Picture, a category often - and erroneously - perceived as the guild’s "Best Picture" equivalent, somehow affects the chances for Brokeback Mountain to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar. That is hardly true. SAG’s Best Cast Award is named so for a reason, and Crash is much more of an ensemble piece - with about fifteen performers supporting one another - than Brokeback Mountain, which basically focuses on the characters played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Also, the SAG Best Cast Award has gone to other ensemble pieces, such as last year’s Sideways, plus Gosford Park, Traffic, and The Full Monty, that eventually failed to win the Best Picture Academy Award.

More Brokeback Mountain Awards

Hollywood Foreign Press Association 2005 Golden Globe Award winners and nominees

List of the British Academy of Film 2005 nominees

Alternative Film Guide

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