Eddie Redmayne pulled ahead of his rivals in the race for the best actor Oscar when he won a Screen Actor’s Guild award for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything on Sunday night.
The 32-year-old actor beat rivals Benedict Cumberbatch, Steve Carell, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Keaton to the prize for male actor in a leading role at the ceremony in Los Angeles.
Redmayne dedicated his award to those living with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the disease Hawkings has suffered for most of his life. He also paid tribute to fellow actors David Oyelowo, who plays Martin Luther King in Selma; Timothy Spall, who took the title role in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, and Bradley Cooper.
None were nominated for a Screen Actor’s Guild award, but Cooper is among Redmayne’s rivals at the Oscars for playing Chris Kyle in the controversial, but hugely successful film American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood.
Birdman, a surreal comedy about a washed-up film actor trying to claw back his credibility by staging and acting in a Broadway play, had a good weekend. On Saturday night the film, written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, won best film at the Producers Guild awards. The last seven films to take the award have gone on to win best picture at the Oscars.
Birdman also took the prize for outstanding cast in a motion picture at the Screen actors guild awards. Accepting the prize, its star Michael Keaton described acting as “the ultimate team sport”.
“Actors love this movie for showing the courage actors have to kind of go out there and lay it on the line,” Keaton told the Associated Press.
The film generally regarded as its nearest rival for a best picture Oscar, Boyhood, has had a successful awards ceremony season, winning a Critic’s Choice award and two Golden Globes. At the Screen Actors Guild awards, Patricia Arquette won best female actor in a supporting role for the film. Film commentators regard her as almost certain to take the best supporting actress award at the Oscars.
Julianne Moore is regarded as a similarly sure thing in the best actress category for Still Alice, about a linguistics professor with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She took the Screen Actor’s Guild award for best female actor in the leading role.
The television awards saw Orange is the New Black, a comedy-drama set in a women’s prison, take two awards apiece, one for Uzo Aduba in the female actor in a comedy category.
Viola Davis won best female actor in a drama series for How to Get Away With Murder. In her speech, she thanked the producers for thinking “sexualised, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me.”
Davis alluded to the lack of diversity in roles for non-white women in Hollywood, saying “it starts from the top up”. This year’s Oscars nominations were criticised for having entirely white shortlists in the acting categories.
Other Screen Actors Guild award winners included Kavin Spacey, for House of Cards, and William H Macy, for Shameless.
