Untangling the SAG Awards-Oscars connection

Last month, to try to determine the likelihood (or lack thereof) of a performance snubbed for a nod from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) on Dec. 11 still getting a nod from the academy when its announces its nominations Jan. 22, I examined the overlap (or lack thereof) of performances nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award over the last 10 years.

This month, I thought I should do a similar analysis to determine the likelihood (or lack thereof) of a performance that was snubbed for a nod from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) on Dec. 18 still getting a nod from the academy as well.

* * *

Over the last 10 years, the following performances have been nominated for an Academy Award without first being nominated for a SAG Award:

Best Actor

• Richard Farnsworth ("The Straight Story," 1999)
• Sean Penn ("Sweet and Lowdown," 1999)
• Javier Bardem ("Before Night Falls," 2000)
• Ed Harris ("Pollock," 2000)
• Will Smith ("Ali," 2001)
• Michael Caine ("The Quiet American," 2002)
• Jude Law ("Cold Mountain," 2003)
• Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby," 2004)
• Terence Howard ("Hustle & Flow," 2005)
• Johnny Depp ("Sweeney Todd," 2007)
• Tommy Lee Jones ("In the Valley of Elah," 2007)

Bottom line: Every year, with the exception of 2006, SAG has failed to predict at least one best actor Oscar nominee, and in three of those years -- including last year -- missed two.

Best Actress

• Nicole Kidman ("Moulin Rouge!," 2001)
• Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider," 2003)*
• Samantha Morton ("In America," 2003)
• Keira Knightley ("Pride and Prejudice," 2005)
• Laura Linney ("The Savages," 2007)

Bottom line: For whatever reason, SAG has had its best track record in this category. It correctly predicted all five best actress Oscar nominees five out of 10 years, and over the other five missed more than one only once.

Best Supporting Actor

• Jude Law ("The Talented Mr. Ripley," 1999)
• Benicio Del Toro ("Traffic," 2000)**
• Jon Voight ("Ali," 2001)
• Paul Newman ("Road to Perdition," 2002)
• John C. Reilly ("Chicago," 2002)
• Djimon Hounsou ("In America," 2003)
• Alan Alda ("The Aviator," 2004)
• Clive Owen ("Closer," 2004)
• William Hurt ("A History of Violence," 2005)
• Mark Wahlberg ("The Departed," 2006)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Charlie Wilson's War," 2007)

Bottom line: Every year of the past decade, SAG has missed at least one Oscar nominee in this category, and it missed two in 2002 and 2004. SAG missed a greater number of Oscar nominees in the supporting actress category, but that is due to one very poor showing. This has been its consistently inconsistent category.

Best Supporting Actress

• Toni Collette ("The Sixth Sense," 1999)
• Samantha Morton ("Sweet and Lowdown," 1999)
• Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock," 2000)
• Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind," 2001)***
• Maggie Smith ("Gosford Park," 2001)
• Marisa Tomei ("In the Bedroom," 2001)
• Kate Winslet ("Iris," 2001)
• Meryl Streep ("Adaptation," 2002)
• Shohreh Aghdashloo ("House of Sand and Fog," 2003)
• Marcia Gay Harden ("Mystic River," 2003)
• Natalie Portman ("Closer," 2004)
• Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement," 2007)

Bottom line: This has been SAG's shakiest category. There were two years (2005 and 2006) when its choices completely corresponded with the academy's. There were also two years (1999 and 2003) when it missed on two nominees, and one year (2001) when it missed on four!

* * *

Just for the record, here's a look at the performances that SAG embraced but the academy opted not to in favor of the aforementioned performances:

Best Actor

• Jim Carrey ("Man on the Moon," 1999)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Flawless," 1999) 2008 SAG nominee: Cause for concern?
• Jamie Bell ("Billy Elliot," 2000)
• Benicio Del Toro ("Traffic," 2000)**
• Kevin Kline ("Life as a House," 2001)
• Richard Gere ("Chicago," 2002)
• Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent," 2003)
• Paul Giamatti ("Sideways," 2004) Still considered one of the great snubs in recent academy history.
• Russell Crowe ("Cinderella Man," 2005) The academy was less forgiving about him throwing a telephone at a hotel clerk.
• Ryan Gosling ("Lars and the Real Girl," 2007)
• Emile Hirsch ("Into the Wild," 2007)

Best Actress

• Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind," 2001)***
• Patricia Clarkson ("The Station Agent," 2003)
• Evan Rachel Wood ("Thirteen," 2003)
• Ziyi Zhang ("Memoirs of a Geisha," 2005)
• Angelina Jolie ("A Mighty Heart," 2007) 2008 SAG nominee: Cause for concern?

Best Supporting Actor

• Chris Cooper ("American Beauty," 1999) Once...
• Gary Oldman ("The Contender," 2000)
• Hayden Christensen ("Life as a House," 2001)
• Alfred Molina ("Frida," 2002)
• Dennis Quaid ("Far From Heaven," 2002)
• Chris Cooper ("Seabiscuit," 2003) Twice!
• James Garner ("The Notebook," 2004)
• Freddie Highmore ("Finding Neverland," 2004)
• Don Cheadle ("Crash," 2005)
• Leonardo DiCaprio ("The Departed," 2006)
• Tommy Lee Jones ("No Country for Old Men," 2007)

Best Supporting Actress

• Cameron Diaz ("Being John Malkovich," 1999)
• Julianne Moore ("Magnolia," 1999)
• Kate Winslet ("Quills," 2000) 2008 SAG nominee: Cause for concern?
• Cate Blanchett ("Bandits," 2001) 
• Judi Dench ("The Shipping News," 2001)
• Cameron Diaz ("Vanilla Sky," 2001)
• Dakota Fanning ("I Am Sam," 2001)
• Michelle Pfeiffer ("White Oleander," 2002)
• Maria Bello ("The Cooler," 2003)
• Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider," 2003)*
• Cloris Leachman ("Spanglish," 2004)
• Catherine Keener ("Into the Wild," 2007)

* * *

Can we deduce any patterns/trends from these lists of SAG/AMPAS divergences? Here are a few areas on which I focused my attention:

• Age No. Both SAG (Bell '01, Christensen '01, Fanning '01, Wood '03, Highmore '04, Hirsch '07) and AMPAS (Portman '04, Knightley '05, Ronan '07) honored younger actors in roughly equal measure, and both SAG (Dench '01, Garner '04, Leachman '04) and AMPAS (Farnsworth '99, M. Smith '01, Newman '02, Alda '04, Eastwood '04) honored actors over the age of 65 in roughly equal measure.
• Nationality Somewhat. AMPAS celebrated 14 foreign-born actors, whereas SAG celebrated only 10. The discrepancy is slightly less when one removes British actors from the equation, but AMPAS still leads 7 to 6.
• Size of film Yes. SAG is slightly friendlier toward performances in small movies ("The Station Agent"), whereas the academy is slightly friendlier toward performances in mainstream movies ("Ali").

* * *

Most have long assumed that a nod from SAG is a better predictor than a nod from HFPA of an eventual nod from the academy, since HFPA is composed of a small group of foreign journalists, whereas SAG is composed mostly of American actors, much like the academy. (The actors branch is easily the largest of the academy's 16, featuring 1,243 of its 5,819 members, or 21.4%.)

However, this analysis reveals that -- at least over the past decade -- a nod from HFPA has actually been a slightly better predictor than a nod from SAG of an eventual nod from the academy. Consider the following breakdown of the number of performances missed by each group:

• Best Actor Globes (6) vs. SAG (11)
• Best Actress Globes (5) vs. SAG (5)
• Best Supporting Actor Globes (12) vs. SAG (11)
• Best Supporting Actress Globes (11) vs. SAG (12)

* * *

*Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider," 2003) was nominated by SAG in supporting and by the academy in lead

**Benicio Del Toro ("Traffic," 2000) was nominated by SAG in lead and by the academy in supporting

***Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind," 2001) was nominated by SAG in lead and by the academy in supporting

---

Photo: Saoirse Ronan in "Atonement." She got a nod from the Oscars without a nod from the SAG Awards. Credit: Focus Features

Comments

[Lauren]

Thanks for the meticulous research and sorry to tweak here, but I think you need a correction under the Actress category for the performances that SAG embraced but the academy did not:

"Angelina Jolie ("Changeling," 2007) 2008 SAG nominee: Cause for concern?"

shouldn't it for "A Mighty Heart"?

p.s: don't think it is a cause for concern this year, not because the performance is better, but because of the Clint Eastwood association. Don't mean to bring her performance down, but I think people would nominate a piece of Plywood because of Clint Eastwood.

[Scott Feinberg]

Lauren, Thanks for your kind words, your careful reading of the piece, and for catching that typo! It has been corrected above.

[tesh]

I missed your GG analysis, but wouldn't GG have more prediction power over SAG in Actor and Actress because they have 2 categories, drama and musical/comedy?

[Scott Feinberg]

That's absolutely true.

[Edward L.]

Thanks for an interesting article. Just one point: Michael Caine was also passed over by the SAG, for The Quiet American in 2001, and then went on to score an Oscar nomination. (Richard Gere in Chicago was the SAG nominee that missed out on an Oscar nod.)

I still find that 2001 supporting actress year baffling! It's strange that there was such disparity between the SAG choices and those of AMPAS.

[Scott Feinberg]

Edward, Thank you VERY much for catching that one! I have to confess that I was victimized by an error on the Internet--ah, the dangers of Wikipedia--but I have corrected it at its source and also above. Thank you again.

[jake]

I really hope that this bodes well for Leonardo DiCaprio. I think both Leo and Kate should win best actor and actress this year - with their great body of work of several oscar nominations, not to meniton their best performances ever in Revolutionary Road.

[Rob]

I agree Jake.

I certainly think if voters have watched Winslet in Revolutionary Road, they will vote for DiCaprio too, perhaps over Jenkins or Pitt.

I remain most nervous about Eastwood which could become possibly the most gratuitous nomination in recent memory

[BenG]

Hey. You said that Jennifer Connelly was passed over for an Oscar nomination for a Beautiful Mind. In fact, not only was she nominated but she also won that Oscar!

[Scott Feinberg]

Rob,
You missed the asterisk after her name, which corresponds with the footnote at the bottom of the post that indicates she was not nominated *in that same category* at the Oscars. I am well aware that she won. Thanks.

[Carlos Balbás-Espín]

Good for you, man! You kept your promise: you DID stop the hatin' ;).

On a side note, it's amost criminal that Chris Cooper was snubbed those two times by AMPAS, specially for his bravura turn in "American Beauty". At least they tried to make up for it with his win for his hilarious (and very good, by the way) performance in "Adaptation."

I just hope that Michael Shannon doesn't succeed him as this year's "snubee in a supporting role in a Sam Mendes' film about life in the suburbs".

[Trenner]

You've gotten it all wrong! The intention of the SAG awards is not to predict the Oscars, it's to award the performances THEY think should be honored. DUH.