Screen Actors Guild awards 2025: Timothee Chalamet wins best actor, Conclave takes top cast prize

Timothee Chalamet upset the Screen Actors Guild awards by beating his rival Adrien Brody to best actor, while Conclave won the top prize of ensemble cast in a motion picture.

Chalamet and Brody are the top contenders for the Oscars next week but Brody has, thus far, bested Chalamet at every major ceremony in this awards season.

The young star known for his laidback public persona adopted a more serious tone when he took the stage, referencing the long commitment to his role in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, and his overall artistic ambition.

“I know the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into this role and how much this means to me, but the truth is, this was five and a half years of my life. I poured everything I had into playing this incomparable artist, Mr Bob Dylan, a true American hero,” he said.

“It was the honour of a lifetime playing him, it’s an honour I share with Monica (Barbaro), Edward (Norton), the entire cast. In that genre, doing a biopic that could be perhaps tired, everyone gave it their all. I’m deeply grateful to them.

“I can’t downplay the significance of this award because it means the most to me, and I know we’re in a subjective business but the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats, I’m inspired by the greats, I’m inspired by the greats here tonight.

“I’m as inspired by Daniel Day Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there, so I’m deeply grateful to that. This doesn’t signify that, it’s a little more fuel, it’s a little more ammo to keep going.”

If Chalamet, 29, claims the Oscar on March 3, he will break a record Brody set in 2003 for youngest lead actor winner. Brody, who is competing this year for this performance in The Brutalist, was less than a month out from turning 30 when he won for The Pianist. Chalamet is 29 years old and two months.

A SAG win for Chalamet indicates the Oscars lead actor race isn’t as settled as expected. The other film acting gongs went to a triumvirate of stars who are widely tipped to win next week at the Oscars — Demi Moore for The Substance in lead actress, Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain in supporting actor and Zoe Saldana in supporting actress for Emilia Perez.

The SAGs are given out by the American actors’ union and has roughly 160,000 eligible voters. It is seen as an important precursor to the Oscars as the actors’ branch has the highest number of members in the Academy’s 10,000-strong, invite-only membership. Almost everyone in the actors’ branch would be a SAG member.

While Oscars voting closed last week, which means any of the victories and speeches today won’t influence the results next week, the SAGs can function as tea leaves.

Papal election drama Conclave took home the award for best ensemble cast in a motion picture with actors Ralph Fiennes, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow and Sergio Castellitto on hand to accept.

Directed by Edward Berger, the film about an election for a new pope behind the closed doors of the Vatican might prove timely with news the real-world pontiff, Pope Francis, is in a critical condition due to a “respiratory crisis”.

Earlier during the ceremony when the Conclave cast were introducing their project, Rossellini took a moment to wish Pope Francis “a speedy recovery”.

Conclave’s SAGs victory coupled with its win at the BAFTAs last week means the Oscars best picture race is down to it and Anora, the latter of which won the Producers Guild Awards (the most successful predictor award) and the Directors Guild Awards.

It’s been an unusually tumultuous awards season that has been marked by scandals and the fact there has been no clear frontrunner until the late-breaking Anora and Conclave. Compare that to 2024 when it was clear from early on that Oppenheimer would sweep the Oscars, and it did.

The SAGs also awarded a raft of TV and streaming categories. The ensemble cast gongs went to Shogun in drama and Only Murders in the Building in comedy.

Selena Gomez looked genuinely shocked when the cosy murder mystery was read out by category presenters Zoey Deschanel and Max Greenfield and collected the award with the supporting cast as co-leads Martin Short and Steve Martin were absent.

“We never win!” Gomez proclaimed. “Marty and Steve aren’t here because, you know, they don’t really care. I just don’t know what to say.”

Short had also won an individual SAG for his role in the show, which has been renewed for a fifth season. Jean Hacks won the award for female performance in a comedy series.

Shogun continued its winning streak which in addition to ensemble cast, it also won for leads Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, as did Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning, who added another trophy to her already teeming collection.

Colin Farrell picked up the award for male actor in a miniseries or TV movie for his work on The Penguin, but was outted by presenter Jamie Lee Curtis as having given her Covid at an unspecified Golden Globes ceremony.

“Guilty as charged,” Farrell confirmed in his speech. “But Brendan Gleeson f—king gave it to me, so I was just spreading the love.”

Jane Fonda was the recipient of the lifetime achievement award and the actor and political activist gave a customary, fired-up speech which reflected on the McCarthy-era when she made her first movie in 1958 and the current environment, but never mentioned Donald Trump by name.

She said, “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge, would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?

“We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it, this is not a rehearsal. This is it. We must’ve for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening. This is the big time, folks.

“We must not isolate, we must stay in community, we must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future, one that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe, to quote the novelist Pearl Cleage, ‘On the other side of the conflagration, there will still be love, there will still be beauty, and there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in’. Let’s make it so.”

The SAGs were hosted by Kristen Bell which allowed the producers and writers to engineer an ongoing gag throughout the ceremony about her favourite co-star with her The Good Place colleagues Ted Danson and William Jackson Harper and Nobody Wants This onscreen love interest Adam Brody all vie-ing for the title.

Brody’s wife, Leighton Meester, then joined Bell for a Gossip Girl bit, on which Bell was the unseen narrator.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Jane Fonda

MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown - WINNER

Daniel Craig, Queer

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

FEMALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez

Mikey Madison, Anora

Demi Moore, The Substance - WINNER

MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Jonathan Bailey, Wicked

Yura Borisov, Anora

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain - WINNER

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Jamie Lee Curtis, The Last Showgirl

Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez - WINNER

CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE

A Complete Unknown

Anora

Conclave - WINNER

Wicked

Emilia Perez

STUNT ENSEMBLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

Deadpool & Wolverine

Dune: Part Two

The Fall Guy - WINNER

Gladiator II

Wicked

MALE ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES

Javier Bardem, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

Colin Farrell, The Penguin - WINNER

Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer

Kevin Kline, Disclaimer

Andrew Scott, Ripley

FEMALE ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES

Kathy Bates, The Great Lillian Hall

Cate Blanchett, Disclaimer

Jodie Foster, True Detective: Night Country

Lily Gladstone, Under the Bridge

Jessica Gunning, Baby Reindeer - WINNER

Cristin Milioti, The Penguin

MALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Tadanobu Asano, Shogun

Jeff Bridges, The Old Man

Gary Oldman, Slow Horses

Eddie Redmayne, The Day of the Jackal

Hiroyuki Sanada, Shogun - WINNER

FEMALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Kathy Bates, Matlock

Nicola Coughlan, Bridgerton

Allison Janney, The Diplomat

Keri Russell, The Diplomat

Anna Sawai, Shogun - WINNER

MALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Adam Brody, Nobody Wants This

Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside

Harrison Ford, Shrinking

Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building - WINNER

Jeremy Allen White, The Bear

FEMALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Kristen Bell, Nobody Wants This

Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary

Liza Colon-Zayas, The Bear

Ayo Edebiri, The Bear

Jean Smart, Hacks - WINNER

ENSEMBLE IN A DRAMA SERIES

Bridgerton

The Day of the Jackal

The Diplomat

Shogun - WINNER

Slow Horses

ENSEMBLE IN A COMEDY SERIES

Abbott Elementary

The Bear

Hacks

Only Murders in a Building - WINNER

Shrinking

STUNT ENSEMBLE IN A TV SERIES

The Boys

Fallout

House of the Dragon

The Penguin

Shogun - WINNER