Why Jodie Foster Didn’t Know She Was Nominated for a SAG Award for Nell Until After She Won

Jodie Foster was surprised when she realized she had won a Screen Actors Guild Award in 1995 – because she didn’t know the awards existed.

“I first heard about my win the next morning,” she told Netflix’s Tudum in an interview published Wednesday about the 30-year history of the SAG Awards.

“I never heard of the nomination,” recalled the actress, 61, who earned a SAG statuette for her lead role in the film. Nell. Learning about her nomination and victory, she added, “was a shock, as if someone had made a mistake.”

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As Kathy Connell, founder of the SAG awards committee and former executive producer, told Tudum, the star-studded show wasn’t the main part of the awards season right out of the gate.

“People would say, ‘SAG Awards, what SAG Awards?’ It was so nerve wracking because we were throwing one of the biggest parties in Hollywood and we didn’t know if anyone was going to come,” Connell said.

Along with Foster, the first SAG Award winners were Tom Hanks for Forrest GumpDianne Wiest for Bullets over Broadway and Martin Landau for Ed Wood. The ceremony was held on Stage 12 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. SAG-AFTRA members voted on the winners, as they still do today.

NYPD Blue star Dennis Franz, who won SAG’s first award for best actor in a drama series, recalled how he fit the ceremony between appearances at Frank Sinatra’s golf tournament Frasier nominated Kelsey Grammer.

“Honestly, when I first heard about the SAG Awards, my reaction was, ‘Oh, great. Just what we needed, another award,'” said Franz, 79. “But when I thought about it , I thought, ‘This is really actors giving credit to other actors,’ and it seemed like a unique, good idea.”

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Jodie Foster 2019

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Nell, directed by Michael Apted and starring Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson and Richard Libertini, also earned Foster his third of five Oscar nominations. She won an Oscar in 1988 Defendant and in 1991 The Silence of the Lambs (both predate the SAG Awards).

“Nell it was a life-changing performance for me personally, but it wasn’t necessarily a critics’ favorite,” Foster said. “It meant a lot that fellow actors from my own guild felt moved enough to pay tribute to me [the] first event ever.”

That’s why, she added, she attended the second annual ceremony in 1996, presenting the best actor award (to Nicolas Cage for Departure from Las Vegas). “I wanted to present as soon as possible to confirm how touched I was by last year’s honor and to be a part of a new tradition,” Foster told Tudumu.

Jodie Foster and Nicolas Cage at the 2nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1996.

SGranitz/WireImage

Foster also appeared at the 2019 SAG Awards Black pantherpresented the award for Best Ensemble – which Tudum said was her “favorite category”.

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“Yes, actors work in ensembles and that aspect is rarely acknowledged,” she said of the award.

Foster is again in the running for a SAG Award this year. At the upcoming ceremony, she was nominated for the second time, in the category of supporting film actress for her work in the role of Bonnie Stoll in Nyad.

The 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be broadcast live on Netflix on Saturday, February 24, at 8:00 PM ET, from the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall in Los Angeles. SAG-AFTRA announced the list of hosts of the ceremony, which includes Idris Elba, Jessica Chastain, Erika Alexander, Emily Blunt, Fran Drescher and Jennifer Aniston. The latter will present this year’s SAG Lifetime Achievement Award to Barbra Streisand.

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Source: HIS Education