Penn's Wild film leads SAG noms
2007-12-20 17:17
Los Angeles - The road-trip drama Into the Wild received a leading four Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations on Thursday, including honours for lead actor Emile Hirsch and supporting players Hal Holbrook and Catherine Keener.
Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild also was nominated for performance by its overall cast, along with the Western 3:10 to Yuma, the crime sagas American Gangster and No Country for Old Men and the musical Hairspray.
Hirsch was nominated as best actor for his role as fierce idealist Christopher McCandless, a recent college graduate who abandoned a cosy life and took to the road for two years, coming to a tragic end in the Alaska wilderness in the 1990s.
Other best-actor nominees were George Clooney as a conscience-stricken attorney in Michael Clayton, Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil baron in There Will Be Blood, Ryan Gosling as a social misfit with a life-size doll for a girlfriend in Lars and the Real Girl and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mobster in Eastern Promises.
Nominated for best actress were Cate Blanchett as the British monarch in
Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Julie Christie as a woman fading from Alzheimer's in Away From Her, Marion Cotillard as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, Angelina Jolie as journalist Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart and Ellen Page as a whipsmart pregnant teen in Juno.
Blanchett also was nominated for supporting actress as an incarnation of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, a fanciful film biography featuring six different performers playing variations of the musician.
Guild awards will be presented on January 27 in a ceremony televised on TNT and TBS.
Unlike the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, which face turmoil caused by striking Hollywood writers, the guild awards look as though they can come off as planned. With actors showing strong solidarity on strike issues, SAG has reached an agreement with the Writers Guild of America for one of its members to write the ceremony.
If the strike that began last month lingers, though, the Globes on Janaury 13 and Oscars on February 24 face possible protests by striking writers, and stars may stay away rather than cross picket lines.
The Writers Guild rejected a request from Globe organisers to allow striking writers to work on that show. Oscar organisers have not yet asked for a similar waiver but face the same prospect.
Along with the Golden Globes and other film honours, the SAG picks help sort out favourites and other possible nominees for Hollywood's big prizes, the Oscars, whose nominations come out January 22.
Actor guild winners often go on to win Oscars, including three from 2006: lead performers Helen Mirren for The Queen and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland were the guild and Oscar winners, as was supporting-actress Jennifer Hudson for DreamGirls. Guild supporting-actor winner Eddie Murphy for DreamGirls lost at the Oscars to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine.
Little Miss Sunshine won the guild prize for overall acting ensemble, SAG's equivalent of a best-picture honour, while The Departed won best picture at the Oscars.
Film and TV nominees were chosen by two groups of 2 100 people randomly chosen from the guild's 120 000 members. The guild's full membership is eligible to vote for winners.
- AP