1st Annual SAG Awards™ Acceptance Speeches

For Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role


Martin Landau ED WOOD - Bela Lugosi Touchstone Pictures

MARTIN LANDAU: This has been an amazing year for me. You know I have to thank Tim Burton for seeing me in this part when I didn’t see myself in the part. He said there was no other actor he wanted for this part…and its great to get a part where audiences can laugh a little, cry a little and maybe think a little. And it was a great honor to play this actor who is really gifted. It was sort of homage to actors.

I joined SAG in 1952. It wasn’t my first union. My first was Equity and then AFTRA because it was live television. So I started in theatre and went to live television…and then I became a film actor by default. In that I was doing Sigma Core films and stuff like that in New York. And uh its’ been a long trip.

There are 78,000 actor members of SAG. This is a very meaningful thing to me because it’s my peers and I love actors, I care about actors, they are my life.

Ten years ago, there were casting directors who wouldn’t see me, agents that wouldn’t represent me and I know how tough it is to get a job and then when you get a job to do the job well. It’s a tough, tough life: Peeks and valleys, life and career.

This is a peek and I gotta say, I hope I live long enough to work with every one of those 78,000 people.

Gretchen, Gretchen this is for us and for Bella LaGouste. [Applause]


Kathy Baker PICKET FENCES - Jill Brock CBS

KATHY BAKER: I just don’t know really how to tell you all how much this means to get an award for acting from actors.

I have to thank David Kelley for seeing me in this role. I think David has written me one of the best roles ever, regardless of gender or any medium actually. I think he knows how I feel about it.

I wanna thank every single person who works on Pickett Fences. I love you all. Thank you for making me look so good. Thank you to my oldest son, who’s here tonight, for keeping my feet on the ground. I don’t know what I would do without you and your beautiful, little brother and your most excellent father. Oh ah, times up it says.

I can hardly carry this thing. I hope you all get to feel this some day. It’s incredibly heavy.

Thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause]


Jason Alexander SEINFELD

JASON ALEXANDER: I had money on everybody else. I’ve never been so unprepared for anything. I’ve thought of nothing, I don’t even know who else is in the show.

Thank you, NBC; I should do that because I’ll be out of a job one day. And, they’re checked off. Thank you, everyone at table six, even Jane Seymour because you’re lovely to sit with.
I just have the best job in TV and it’s a pleasure to go to work everyday and have as much fun as I do and get paid for it and get things like this (holding up statue). And most of that, the success that I’ve enjoyed, is due to two people in particular, my pals: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. For making me look so stupid each week. [applause]

I also want to thank my family who’s in town. Mom, Jaime, Dad, Sister, and that beautiful woman I’m sitting next to is my wife, Dana, who actually tells me how to do it every week, and my little boy Gabriel at home.

Thank you very much. I am very flattered by this. Thank you. [Applause]


Helen Hunt MAD ABOUT YOU

HELEN HUNT: Thank you very much. This furthers my theory that I am currently the luckiest woman that I know. First of all, Paul Reiser, with all due respect to everyone in this room, is the best. Not only the funniest person I’ve ever seen, but the best actor ever. And I feel that I have been graced to work with this person everyday. [Applause] It’s like getting to play the best acting tennis ever, everyday. So I’m incredibly lucky.

Anne Ramsay, Leila Kenzle, and John Pankow are laughing right now because I forgot to thank them when I won the Golden Globe - A and B – Paul and I have gotten a lot of attention from this show and the truth is there are five of us and they’re not only incredibly talented and incredibly funny, but my dear friends. So I’m honored to get to work with them.

Our writers Danny Jacobson and Jeffrey Lane and our whole staff of writers, they’re why were here and I’m standing in front of you. I’d like to thank my manager, Connie Tavel, Steven Hughvain, and Adam Venice.

And, Thank you very much. [Applause]


Raul Julia THE BURNING SEASON

(Accepting this award for Mr. Raul Julia, Mrs. Merel Julia)

MEREL JULIA: 44,43,42…Um Raul was surrounded by many wonderful people from The Burning Season. John Frankenheimer is a great director. The wonderful producer David Cutlem and all the producers at HBO: Robert Cooper, Michael Hughs, and Hutch Parker. His wonderful and incredible cast: Edward James Olmos, Sonja Braga, Bill Mastrosimone, Jose Perez, Kamala Lopez-Dawson, Nigel Havers, some wonderful friends there.

He was thrilled to play Chico Mendes, a man of conviction, a man who was committed to human beings. I think you see shinning through his own performance, his own commitment to human beings. That being his commitment that drove him through his adult career, which was the end of hunger and to the millions of people who die of hunger needlessly every year in and year out.

Raul had a wonderful, incredible, fantastic life. He didn’t live as long as many years as I would have wanted him to, but he lived them fully. He was joyous and gave a lot of joy to many people. He was about the only person I know who could sit in a restaurant or maybe even here and all of a sudden burst into song because it bubbled up from inside of him and that was natural for him. And with all of that he would say to me, “I only have the moment, I have to live the moment. And I’m most alive when I’m working, when I’m acting.” So I know that tonight he would be very honored to accept his award from you, his acting peers in the profession he loved so very, very much. And be in the company he was in with all the wonderful actors in his category.

So, from myself, from our children, from Raul’s friends and his family and all of his fans this means a great deal to us. Thank you very, very much. [applause]


Dennis Franz NYPD BLUE

DENNIS FRANZ: Wow, get the car. I guess it’s safe to say that ah, indicating from three of the five nominees, that there is life after hair [laugh]. Thank you.

I am very honored to be the first recipient of this award. And it would be impossible for me to accept it without acknowledging the wonderful cast, which I think is the best cast on television. I have to give respect for the people responsible for creating the characters that we are fortunate enough to bring each week to the show. And that is Steven Bochco, David Milch, Gregory Hoblit are wonderfully gifted writers.

I need to thank Judith Moss, Jack Fields, Sam Gore, Cynthia Synder for making my life easier so I can work.

And on a personal level, My bride to be Jonie Zack and our two wonderful girls, Tricia and Krista who make my life complete. I am a very lucky man, Thank you very much. [Applause]


Diane West / BULLETS OVER BRAODWAY

NO SPEECH

George Burns

GEORGE BURNS: Thank you. Thank you very much. But now I’m going do something that is not so easy to do, I’m gunna sit down.

JERRY SEINFELD: Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe in a town with this much plastic surgery that you can even give out a Sag Award. But, I always open with a joke.

This is really, really something to be honored as an ensemble because I know I speak for all of us when I say we, we take our group work very seriously. We love to work together and before each show we all kind a get together and hold hands. We love to work together and so we’re really glad to be honored in this way. Thank you very much. [Applause]

DAVID CHASE: Well, thanks so much to the Screen Actors Guild for giving this award. It’s good to be doing something right. And, I want to acknowledge our line producers and crew – our wondr=erful crew in Seattle. Our writers, producers right here in Los Angeles and our post-production staff.

Andy Schneider who wrote the script who got us the award with his wife and Co-executive Producer Diane Frolov.

ANDREW SCHNEIDER: Excuse me; I’m not off book. On behalf of everyone at Northern Exposure including my partner: Diane Frolov, who couldn’t be here this evening.

I would like to thank the Screen Actors Guild. This award is for showing the diversity of American life. I also have to think they show the diversity in a way that is not stereotypical. If that’s so then our cast is largely a catalyst because they are a group of actors so talented, so engaging, so multifaceted that

NYPD BLUE

HENRY SIMMONS: I guess I’ve been elected. We’ve been through ha lot as a cast together, if you can imagine to get the floods and fires, and earthquakes, Donald Wildmen, David Carnos departure…but we’re here and I guess that’s the important thing.

We would all like to thank Steven Bochco for obvious reasons. David Milch, Greg Hoblit, Mike Robbin, Jenny Laurie, Alexis Noblo, our cast and our wonderful crew. Thank you very much. [Applause]


Joanne Woodward BREATHING LESSONS

NO SPEECH


Jodie Foster NELL

NO SPEECH


Tom Hanks FORREST GUMP

TOM HANKS: Thank you. Thank you. I love that this man is holding the masks of comedy and tragedy. They’re both so hard to do and actually they’re almost mirror images of each other. Both of them will make you loose sleep, question your motives, wonder why you’re there, wonder why you’re doing this in the first place.

But if you’re crazy enough to want to do that in a medium that never lets you forget you were there in the first place. That lives forever. You can get one of these: A Screen Actors Guild Card. I got mine for the pilot of Bosom Buddies. My wife got hers for playing a cheerleader on the Brady Bunch. We’ve all got our wonderful stories and our wonderful memories that are connected with this.

If you’re lucky enough you get to work in an ensemble with Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field. And get to work under the guidance of Steve Starkey, Wendy Finerman, Bob Zemeckis, Eric Roth. If you’re really lucky you get to be singled out with: Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins, John Travolta, with um and uh Paul Newman.

I say I’m the luckiest man in the world because I’ve got the most gorgeous wife, who I would say is Miss SAG of 1982.

I’m not sure but you get to have a moment like this in front of all you, my peers, thank you, thank you. [Applause]