Jean Dujardin is congratulated by his co-star Berenice Bejo after he is announced the winner of the award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role for “The Artist” at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday Jan. 29, 2012 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)By ROB LOWMAN
LOS ANGELES — On a dreamy night when actors talked about each other, rather than about themselves, the cast of “The Help” and HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” took home top prizes at the 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, held Sunday at the Shrine Exposition Center.
It was a night of at least mild upsets with “The Help’s” Viola Davis winning the best film actress award over favorites Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams, who had both won Golden Globes, and “The Artist’s” Jean Dujardin being named best actor in a film, beating out Hollywood favorite George Clooney.
Davis led the ensemble of “The Help,” the drama set in the early 1960s in the South about black maids and their white employers, to the stage and noted that racism and sexism are the problems of everyone.
“I was 8 years old when I decided to be an actress,” she said earlier, when accepting her best-actress trophy. She then paid tribute to Cicely Tyson, a co-star in “The Help,” and Streep as inspiration. “What is there but a dream,” she said. “You can’t trade in your dream for another.”