Don’t Miss SAG Awards This Sunday

by James Parks, Jan 23, 2009

Angela Bassett, star of the TV series “ER,” is one of the presenters at this year’s SAG Awards.

It’s time for the biggest awards show in Hollywood—the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®. The only all-union awards show honors Screen Actors (SAG) members for their outstanding performances over the past year. This year SAG is bestowing its highest award for Life Achievement to James Earl Jones.

SAG is America’s largest union representing working actors, with 120,000 members in film, television, commercials, video games, music videos and other new media. The SAG Awards is the only nationally televised awards show of any kind that honors the work of union members.

There is a star-studded lineup of presenters, including Christina Applegate, Angela Bassett, Jon Hamm, John Krasinski, Eric McCormack, Kyra Sedgwick and William Shatner and Forest Whitaker.

The 2009 SAG Awards® ceremony will be simulcast live nationally on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 25, at 8 p.m. EST/PST, 7 p.m. CDT and 6 p.m. MST from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. An encore presentation will air on TNT at 11 p.m. EST/PST. For satellite and HD viewers, the live presentation can be seen on TBS and TNT at 8 p.m. EST (5 p.m. PST), while the encore can be seen on TNT at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. PST).

In more than 50 years as an actor, Jones, 77, has won two Tonys, three Emmys, six Drama Desk Awards, a Golden Globe, two NAACP Image Awards and a Grammy. This year, he recently was back on Broadway playing Big Daddy in a new adaptation of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Says SAG President Alan Rosenberg:

James Earl Jones’s distinguished career on stage, in film, on television, in commercials and as a vocal presence without peer commands our admiration and respect. His long and quiet devotion to advancing literacy, the arts and humanities on a national and local scale deserves our appreciation. It is our honor to bestow the Guild’s highest tribute on this extraordinary actor.

As a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Jones joins such previous honorees as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (1986), Elizabeth Taylor (1997), Ricardo Montelbán (1993), Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (2000), Edward Asner (2001), Clint Eastwood (2002), Shirley Temple Black (2005), Julie Andrews (2006) and Charles Durning (2007).

The SAG awards are the only accolades in the entertainment industry devoted solely to actors honoring actors. Two randomly selected panels-one for television and one for film-each comprised of 2,100 Guild members from across the United States, chose this year’s nominees. The award winners then are chosen in a vote by the union’s members.

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