‘The Help’ wins big at the Screen Actors Guild Awards

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‘The Help’ wins big at the Screen Actors Guild Awards

LOS ANGELES - Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were the maids of honor at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, where their Deep South drama “The Help’’ won them acting prizes and earned the trophy for overall cast performance.

Davis won as best actress and Spencer as supporting actress for “The Help,’’ while Jean Dujardin was named best actor for the silent film “The Artist’’ and Christopher Plummer took the supporting actor award for the father-son tale “Beginners.’’

The wins boost the actors’ prospects for the same honors at the Feb. 26 Academy Awards.

In “The Help,’’ Davis and Spencer play black maids going public with uneasy truths about their white employers in 1960s Mississippi.

“I just have to say that the stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of color or women. It’s all of our burden, all of us,’’ Davis said, accepting the ensemble prize on behalf of her “The Help’’ co-stars.

Accepting her best actress award, Davis singled out two performers in the audience who inspired her early in her career: “The Help’’ co-star Cicely Tyson and Meryl Streep, Davis’ co-star in the 2008 drama “Doubt’’ and one of the nominees she beat out for the SAG prize. Streep had been nominated as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,’’ a role that won her the dramatic actress award at the Golden Globes over Davis.

A French film star who is a newcomer to Hollywood’s awards scene with “The Artist,’’ Dujardin played a silent-era screen idol fallen on hard times as talking pictures take over in the late 1920s.

“I was a very bad student. I didn’t listen in class. I was always dreaming,’’ Dujardin said. “My teachers called me ‘Jean of the Moon,’ and I realize now that I never stopped dreaming. Thank you very much. Thank you for this dream.’’ On the television side, comedy series awards went to “Modern Family’’ for best ensemble; Alec Baldwin as best actor for “30 Rock’’; and Betty White as best actress for “Hot in Cleveland.’’

“You can’t name me without naming those other wonderful women on ‘Hot in Cleveland,’’’ the 90-year-old White said.

“This nomination belongs to four of us. Please, please know that I’m dealing them right in with this. I’m not going to let them keep this, but I’ll let them see it,” she said.

The TV drama show winners were: Jessica Lange as best actress for “American Horror Story’’ and Steve Buscemi as best actor for “Boardwalk Empire,’’ which also won the ensemble prize.
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