Timothée Chalamet wins best actor SAG Award, shaking up Oscar race

Timothée Chalamet won the SAG Award for champion actor, his archetypal large acting prize, astatine the awards amusement Sunday night.

The actor, 29, was recognized for his relation arsenic vocalist Bob Dylan successful “A Complete Unknown.” Although Chalamet’s show was wide celebrated, Adrien Brody of “The Brutalist” has bested Chalamet by winning each different large grant this season.

The Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics Choice Award — each of which Chalamet was besides nominated for — went to Brody and helium is inactive wide expected to instrumentality location the Oscar adjacent week. But Chalamet’s triumph Sunday, fixed that the SAG Award is voted connected by actors, could beryllium indicative of the Oscar going to him instead. The acting subdivision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the largest voting bloc of the Oscars.

“I cognize the classiest happening would beryllium to downplay the effort that went into this relation and however overmuch this means to me, but the information is, this was five-and-a-half years of my life,” Chalamet said. “I poured everything I had to play this incomparable artist, Mr. Bob Dylan, a existent American hero, and it was the grant of a beingness playing him. It’s an grant I stock with Monica [Barbaro], Elle [Fanning], Edward [Norton], the full cast, successful a genre, doing a biopic, that could beryllium possibly tired. Everyone gave their all.”

Chalamet said helium was not expecting the grant and thanked his mother, who helium said has been moving for Actors’ Equity Assn. for 40 years. He devoted overmuch of his code to what helium called his “pursuit of greatness.”

“I cognize we’re successful a subjective concern but the information is, I’m truly successful pursuit of greatness,” Chalamet said. “I cognize radical don’t usually speech similar that. I privation to beryllium 1 of the greats. I’m inspired by the greats, inspired by the greats present tonight. I’m arsenic inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis arsenic I americium by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps — and I privation to beryllium up there. So I’m profoundly grateful. This doesn’t signify that. It’s a small much fuel. It’s a small much ammo to support going.”

Chalamet, left, and Brody, pictured present successful 2021, are believed to beryllium the front-runners successful this year’s histrion Oscar race.

(Valery Hache / AFP via Getty Images)

Chalamet was nominated alongside Brody, Daniel Craig (“Queer”), Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”) and Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”). He has been antecedently nominated for 2 SAG Awards recognizing his idiosyncratic performance, and for formed designation 3 times. He was besides nominated nether the champion formed class for “A Complete Unknown.”

Chalamet’s young vocation has already included respective large grant nominations, but Sunday marks his archetypal clip taking 1 home. When the histrion hosted “Saturday Night Live” successful January, helium devoted overmuch of his monologue to an extended gag astir consistently losing astatine awards shows.

His triumph sets the signifier for an unpredictable result astatine adjacent week’s Academy Awards. He is up against Brody, Domingo, Fiennes and Sebastian Stan, who’s nominated for “The Apprentice.” If helium wins, Chalamet volition besides go the youngest to instrumentality the pb histrion trophy. Brody, who won for “The Pianist” successful 2003 conscionable weeks shy of his 30th birthday, presently holds that title.