Sag awards 2025: Timothée Chalamet, Demi Moore, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña win major categories

Screen Actors Guild awards go to Shōgun and Conclave ensembles, while Jane Fonda gives a rousing political speech while accepting a life achievement award. Timothée Chalamet has won best actor in a surprise upset at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, with Demi Moore and the ensembles of Shōgun and Conclave also winning big.

Chalamet won best male actor in a leading role, his first in an awards race that has been led all season by The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, who has picked up the Golden Globe, Bafta and Critics’ Choice awards and is still widely predicted to win the Oscar next week.

“I was not expecting this at all, truly,” Chalamet said while accepting the Sag award, adding: “I poured everything I had into playing this incomparable artist.”. Moore won for her role in the body horror The Substance, triumphing over Anora’s Mikey Madison and Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo in the female actor in a leading role category. “This is extraordinary and so deeply meaningful,” Moore said in an emotional speech.

The stars of the papal election thriller Conclave won for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture, beating Wicked, A Complete Unknown, Anora and Emilia Pérez. Ralph Fiennes, who plays Cardinal Lawrence in the film, spoke about the importance of celebrating community in his speech.

Kieran Culkin picked up yet another supporting male actor award for his role in comedy drama A Real Pain, having already won the Golden Globe, Bafta and the weekend’s Independent Spirit awards. The actor has previously won twice at the Sag awards as part of the Succession ensemble.

Zoe Saldaña also continued her run of wins, picking up the supporting female actor award for her role in the Netflix musical Emilia Pérez. “I am proud to be part of a union that allows me to be who I am,” she said, adding: “Everybody has the right to be who they are.”.

Continuing its sweep, having dominated the Emmys and the Golden Globes, the historical drama Shōgun won four awards: drama ensemble, stunt ensemble and best male and female actor in a drama series. In a tearful speech, the best female actor winner, Anna Sawai, said the show’s success has been “beyond my imagination”, while the best male actor winner, Hiroyuki Sanada, said it had shown that “acting is a universal language”.

The Baby Reindeer actor Jessica Gunning beat out Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett and Kathy Bates to be named best female actor in a TV movie or limited series, thanking her co-star and the show’s creator, Richard Gadd, for “making my dreams come true”.

Colin Farrell won his first Sag award – best male actor in a limited series – for his performance in The Penguin, receiving the award from Jamie Lee Curtis, who referred to him as “the man who gave me Covid at the Golden Globes”. Farrell said he was “guilty as charged” before blaming his Banshees of Inisherin co-star Brendan Gleeson for giving it to him first.

The Hacks star Jean Smart saw off competition from The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson to win her third Sag award for female actor in a comedy series. Martin Short was named the surprise winner of male actor in a comedy series for Only Murders in the Building, beating out the two-time winner Jeremy Allen White as well as Harrison Ford and Ted Danson to claim his first Sag award.

The comedy ensemble award was won by the cast of Only Murders in the Building. “Wait, we never win, this is so weird!” Selena Gomez said on stage. This year’s lifetime achievement award went to Jane Fonda, dubbed “a woman whose life on and off the screen has simply been epic” by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

“This means the world to me,” Fonda said, after receiving a standing ovation. The 87-year-old spoke of her “weird” career and called herself a “late bloomer” with her late-in-life resurgence. In reference to the current political climate in the US, which Fonda compared to McCarthyism, she said “woke just means you give a damn about other people” and “a whole lot of people are going to be hurt by what is happening”.

“We mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what is happening,” she added. “This is big-time serious, folks, so let’s be brave.”. The ceremony, which aired live on Netflix, was hosted by the actor Kristen Bell, nominated on the night for her role in Nobody Wants This. In her opening monologue she paid tribute to the firefighters of Los Angeles, some of whom were in attendance, expressing gratitude for their bravery during the wildfires.

The Sag awards, which are voted on by actors, can indicate which way the Oscars will go: the acting branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the biggest voting bloc in the Academy Awards. Last year the Sag winners Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr and Da’Vine Joy Randolph went on to win Oscars in their respective categories.