Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer and Lily Gladstone Made SAG History

Oppenheimer made SAG history last night when it became the first film to win Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Ensemble from the Actors Guild. Last year’s Everything Everywhere also made history with three acting wins along with ensemble. In the awards race, trends can often last more than one cycle.

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If Oppenheimer continues its winning streak tonight at the PGAs (as it is expected to) it could win the same number of awards on Oscar night. There is always the chance that it won’t, of course, though the SAGs and the BAFTAs have now aligned. That in itself is rare.

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There are only three films in all of Oscar history to win this combination of awards. And those were:

1944 – Going My Way
1946 – The Best Years of Our Lives
1959 – Ben-Hur

And that’s it. Oppenheimer might become the fourth. It’s unusual because awards voters tend to split up the big categories in the era of the expanded ballot especially, but as you can see by the stat above, throughout all of Oscar history. Mystic River and Dallas Buyers Club are two films that won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor but did not win Best Picture. Films in the past that won all four acting categories also did not win Best Picture.

Winning both the BAFTA and the SAG does give Cillian Murphy the advantage heading in, especially with his previous Globe win. However, two actors in the past won both the BAFTA and the SAG and lost the Oscar — Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York (losing to Adrien Brody for The Pianist) and Russell Crowe for A Beautiful Mind, who lost to Denzel Washington for Training Day.

Crowe had bad press heading into the Oscars after a fight at the BAFTA. We’ll always wonder if that contributed to his loss. Denzel Washington had never won, and that year, it was a big deal for both Halle Berry and Denzel Washington to win on the same night.

Murphy had obvious support at the BAFTAs but also at SAG because he’s such a popular TV actor on Peaky Blinders, which no doubt helped. This doesn’t mean he is 100% locked for Actor but it does make him the safer bet for predictions.

Lily Gladstone’s win at the SAG was a bit of a surprise, even if a few of us predicted it, because we’d seen Emma Stone take the Critics Choice and the BAFTA. But no one was happier for Gladstone than Stone, who applauded excitedly when she heard Lily’s name.

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Gladstone makes history as the first Native American actress to win a SAG Award, and she will make history again at the Oscars if she prevails on March 10th. When she won and the crowd gave her a standing ovation there wasn’t a single person in that theater that did not want to see her win. It’s easy to be cynical about the awards race but some wins feel better than others.

In Gladstone’s case, the “making history” aspect of it matters, but so does the “Cinderella at the ball” aspect. Meaning, Gladstone was a hard-working character actress who quietly went about her career for years. She found in Mollie Burkhart a leading role in a major Hollywood film directed by Martin Scorsese. That would be a big deal for any actress. But don’t listen to me, here’s Gladstone six years ago telling people about how much she loves movies while also teaching viewers how to make them.

And then there is the prophetic high school yearbook photo:

Deadline contacted Josh Ryder, who said, “I don’t think I had the capacity necessarily to think, or the understanding of what it would take to put oneself in that position to be nominated for an Oscar, and Lily has done it.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone not wanting this for her, not wanting the chance to watch someone win where it really feels that good.  I personally would have loved to see veteran Annette Bening win too — still coping with a b out of COVID meant she even had to miss the SAG ceremony last night. All of the nominees in the category give strong performances. Whatever that extra thing is that they need for voters to rally around them remains an open question.

One thing I do know, there probably aren’t many people who will want to see Lily Gladstone lose. The stats make it an open question, however. Not having a BAFTA nom makes Gladstone’s win a slightly longer shot that it would have otherwise been. We saw this with Viola Davis in 2020 who won the SAG, wasn’t nominated for a BAFTA, and lost to Frances McDormand winning her THIRD Oscar.

Last year’s Michelle Yeoh was on BAFTA’s list even if they gave their prize to Cate Blanchett.