There was good news for Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which swept the board at this year's Screen Actors Guild awards.
The 24th annual ceremony celebrated the great and the good of Hollywood on January 21 at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall, and Three Billboards was an outstanding success. Many had already tipped the black comedy about the unsolved murder of a young woman for greatness, so there were no surprises that the movie was all anyone was talking about.
Related: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Ending Explained
Honored at the awards, actors Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell reflected on their wins. McDormand plays distraught mother Mildred Hayes, while Rockwell plays racist cop Jason Dixon. Following on from her win at the Golden Globes, McDormand nabbed the prize for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and Rockwell for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. On the whole, Three Billboards also picked up the prestigious award of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture thanks to other talents like Woody Harrelson and Peter Dinklage.
Elsewhere, Claire Foy beat The Handmaid’s Tale's Elisabeth Moss for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series thanks to The Crown, and a tearful Gary Oldman accepted the award for his part as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. Allison Janney scooped Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for I, Tonya, while Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard landed best actress and actor in a TV movie or limited series thanks to HBO's Big Little Lies. Kidman has been nominated 10 times before, but this year was her first win.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus made history as the first TV actress to win five individual awards thanks to Veep, but wasn't present to collect her honors due to current breast cancer treatment. Mirroring the past, Rita Moreno presented Morgan Freeman with the 54th Life Achievement Award after The Shawshank Redemption actor had given Moreno the 50th, and Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman led the “In Memoriam” section of the ceremony.
It was a particularly female-first year thanks to Kristen Bell being the first ever host of the awards, but the SAG awards were also dampened by the wave of sexual harassment cases in Hollywood. As one of the victims of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Rosanna Arquette was applauded as she took to the stage with Marisa Tomei. However, after the Golden Globes were dominated with the color black to show solidarity for those affected by abuse in the industry, the SAG red carpet was awash with vibrant colors.
Three Billboards won three of the four awards it was nominated for, with Harrelson losing to Rockwell in the supporting role category. Celebrating the best of the screen from last year, the Screen Actors Guild awards is a pretty good indication of who will be taking home those golden statues at the Oscars, so look out for the cast of Three Billboards to grab more headlines later this year.