'Birdman,' 'Orange' win big at SAG Awards

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Celebrities reveal their worst acting advice at the SAG awards At the 2015 SAG awards the stars talked fashion, gifts, and some of their most memorable directing notes.

Birdman made a heroic showing at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday night, winning for outstanding cast in a motion picture.

"This is the ultimate team sport, what we are doing for a living. Every time I turned around, I ran into another tremendous actor," said star Michael Keaton during the acceptance speech. "I'm proud to be a part of this group."

Still Alice's Julianne Moore added to her recent Golden Globe win with a trophy for best actress in a movie at the thespian-centric ceremony. She remembered being psyched for playing twin sisters on As the World Turns early in her career, "and then I realized it was super boring to act by myself.

"What I really craved and what was most exciting for me was being with another actor and feeling that intimacy and that excitement and that thrill of getting to know somebody in that way. That's what keeps me coming back to acting again and again and again."

Eddie Redmayne picked up an important victory for outstanding actor for The Theory of Everything.

"This has been such an extraordinary year for performances," Redmayne said, dedicating the award to all the people with ALS he met while researching his role as theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

"To Stephen and Jane (Wilde) back in Cambridge, thank you for allowing someone who gave up science when they were 14 years old to enter your orbit. And thank you for reminding me of the overwhelming power of the will to love and the will to love every second of your life as fully and as passionately as possible."

Patricia Arquette garnered the trophy for outstanding female actor in a supporting role for the movie Boyhood, and fellow Golden Globe winner J.K. Simmons of Whiplash took home supporting actor.

"I feel like all of us actors are supporting actors,'' Simmons said in his acceptance speech. "Each of us is not only supporting the story, the movie, the play, whatever it is we're doing, each of us is essential and completely crucial to the story. If there's one false moment the train comes off the rails and our willing suspension of disbelief Is gone and we have to earn it back.

"I would like to thank the 49 actors who appear on screen in Whiplash for realizing (director) Damien Chazelle's vision so beautifully."

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A fourth-generation actress, Arquette took note of her family, which "has been committed to acting for over a century, through feast or famine," she said. "My father Lewis Arquette taught me to approach work with compassion and gratitude, and also taught me how hard it is to make a living as an actor."

Diversity played a big role in the TV portion of the awards, with Viola Davis and Orange is the New Black garnering major honors.

Davis won for outstanding female actor in a drama, for How to Get Away with Murder, and she paid tribute to the show's executive producer Shonda Rhimes and others for "thinking that a sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old dark-skinned African-American who looks like me."

Uzo Aduba was the first surprise of the SAGs, and her show Orange is the New Black ended Modern Family's long streak in the best comedy ensemble cast category.

Aduba won outstanding female actor in a comedy on the evening that also marked her first career nomination for her role of left-of-center prison inmate "Crazy Eyes." She tearfully thanked her castmates, "without whom this is not possible. I love you guys so desperately so much. The day I got this job was the day I had stopped acting. And to be in a room with all your amazing talents, for what I respect and love so much, is just the greatest honor."

Kevin Spacey won for outstanding male actor in a drama for House of Cards, while Downtown Abbey was named best TV drama — "the best bad boy/bad girl award ever," said Downton actress Phyllis Logan.

Shameless star William H. Macy received the award for male actor in a comedy, ending Modern Family star Ty Burrell's streak at three.

"There are so many great acceptance speeches I never got to give but not tonight," Macy said. "To my fellow nominees … forget it, you lost."

Mark Ruffalo won outstanding actor in a TV movie/miniseries for his role in the HBO AIDS drama The Normal Heart, Frances McDormand received the outstanding female actor honor for HBO's Olive Kitteridge.

"This is really swell and everything," she said, "but I wish we could all get some really cozy sleepers, a box of See's nuts and chews, hang out and watch more of our work. Because every little snippet I see, I want to see more and more."

Debbie Reynolds was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild, presented by her daughter Carrie Fisher. Reynolds remembered the "ugly bun at the back of my head" she wore during Singin' in the Rain, and she warned Fisher when George Lucas cast her in 1977's Star Wars: "I said, 'Well, Carrie, be careful of any weird hairdos.' So luckily George gave her two buns. Thank you, George."

Two stunt ensemble awards were given out before the show: World War II drama Unbroken received the honor in the movie category, and Game of Thrones won the TV category for the fourth time in a row.