2022 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards winner predictions [Motion Picture]: Will SAG be our best Oscar precursor?

Erik Anderson February 23, 2022

What a difference BAFTA and Oscar nominations can make.

Four of the five Cast nominees are Best Picture Oscar nominees, an impressive crossover, versus 2/5 at BAFTA. Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up and King Richard all have a good case for a win here. While the lack of The Power of the Dog is still odd, especially after securing three individual SAG nods and four acting Oscar nominations, its small cast had most pundits see it missing. Does that make Belfast, a Best Picture frontrunner, the most likely benefactor? Probably, the film managed two individual nods here but one that didn’t even make the Oscar cut. There are plenty of examples of a film winning the top SAG award and losing any individual bids it has so a lone win certainly isn’t out of the question. CODA could see a supporting actor win for Troy Kotsur and King Richard will surely also have Will Smith in the bag. Don’t Look Up has no other nominations but we’ve also seen that kind of win from Black Panther and Parasite so again, not out of the question, especially with a cast as starry as it has. But what if House of Gucci, clearly very popular with the SAG nominating committee, ekes out a surprise win after its flop at the Oscars?

The individual actings nods saw some of the least amount of crossover we’ve seen in quite some time. While Male Actor in a Leading Role went 5/5 (itself a rarity), Actor in a Supporting Role only went 2/5, with the two longstanding frontrunners – Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Power of the Dog and Troy Kotsur in CODA – as the only nominees that have every precursor. It’s probably a very close race between the two with Smit-McPhee’s critics’ awards dominance and the success of his film’s other performers here and for Kotsur with his film in the top category. There’s no reason to think that Will Smith, Golden Globe in tow, won’t pick up his first SAG award on his way to the Oscar. Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Garfield may be close, but not close enough. I’m going with Smit-McPhee in supporting but I think it’s going to be a squeaker.

Female Actor in a Leading Role went 3/5 with Oscar and only 1/5 with BAFTA, and that one – Lady Gaga – didn’t even get Oscar-nominated, making it the most upside down year of this category in quite some time. There’s a good argument for any of Nicole Kidman, Jessica Chastain or Olivia Colman to win here; Oscar winner Kidman has never won an individual SAG for film (she has one for television with Big Little Lies) and Colman won her Oscar for The Favourite without a SAG win (that went to Glenn Close) so this would be a first for her as well. Chastain might have the grass roots support and she’s been the season’s most successful one-woman campaign and could pull it off. If she does over Kidman and Colman, watch out. Female Actor in a Supporting Role, just like supporting actor, went just 2/5 and we have two frontrunners left standing. This should be a slam dunk for Ariana DeBose but Kirsten Dunst is right behind her.

2022 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards winner predictions [Television]: Will it be the sweet smell of ‘Succession’ or is ‘Squid Game’ poised to strike?

Winner voting for this year’s SAG Awards began on January 19 and goes all the way to February 25, a pretty long period when you consider Oscar winner voting is a mere six days. With Oscar and BAFTA nominations landing right in the middle (February 3 and 8, respectively) and both giving us wildly different sets of nominees, we could some very interesting SAG results, especially from those voters who’ve submitted their ballots early.

Five-time SAG Award and Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren is set to receive the 57th Life Achievement Honor at this year’s ceremony. Mirren is the most decorated SAG Life Achievement recipient with a total of 13 SAG Awards nominations and five SAG Award Actor wins. Given annually to an actor who fosters the “finest ideals of the acting profession,” the SAG Life Achievement Award will be the latest of Mirren’s esteemed catalog of international industry and public distinctions recognizing her masterful performances on stage, screen and television. Her previous honors have included an Oscar, three Emmys, one film and three television BAFTA Awards, a Tony Award, a BAFTA Fellowship Award, an Olivier Award, The Film Society at Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award, and she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2003.

The honor will be presented to her by Screen Actors Guild and Oscar winner Kate Winslet, who is nominated again this year, for her titular role in HBO’s Mare of Easttown, which netted her an Emmy Award last September. To date, Winslet has received a total of 13 SAG Awards nominations and three SAG Awards wins for her roles in Sense and Sensibility, The Reader and Mildred Pierce.

The 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards will be held live and in person on Sunday, February 27, 2022. The two-hour telecast will be simulcast live on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT).

Here are my ranked 2022 SAG Award winner predictions for motion pictures.

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Belfast (Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds, Judi Dench, Jude Hill, Colin Morgan)
CODA (Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant, Troy Kotsur, Eugenio Derbez)
Don’t Look Up (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep)
King Richard (Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Jon Bernthal)
House of Gucci (Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Jack Huston, Salma Hayek)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role in a Motion Picture

Will Smith (King Richard)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick … Boom!)
Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role in a Motion Picture

Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)
Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)
Lady Gaga (House of Gucci)
Jennifer Hudson (Respect)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)
Troy Kotsur (CODA)
Bradley Cooper (Licorice Pizza)
Jared Leto (House of Gucci)
Ben Affleck (The Tender Bar)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog)
Caitríona Balfe (Belfast)
Ruth Negga (Passing)
Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley)

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

No Time to Die
Dune
Black Widow
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
The Matrix Resurrections

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.