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Screen Actor Guild Award: A glimps of Future Oscars

Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker won the Actor`s Guild Awards, and are en route to receive an Academy Award. Little Miss Sunshine won the prize for best cast, a prize which is considered comparable to the Academy`s best picture award.Mirren received her award for her depiction of the Queen of England in the Queen and Whitaker won for his pretrial of the legendary Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the movie The Last King of Scotland. Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson received the best supporting actor`s awards for their roles in Dreamgirls, and are also considered leading candidates for the Oscars.

Little Miss Sunshine`s best cast award might give the low budget film an extra push on its way to the Oscars, though Academy Award judges tend to prefer "heavier" dramas such as Babel and the Departed, which are both nominees for the best picture award. Generally speaking, the Screen Actors Guild Award for best cast has never been a good indicator for the Oscar`s best picture award.

In the past 11 years since the guild added the category, only five recipients have gone to receive an Oscar as well, including last year`s Crash. On the Other hand, the recipients of the best actor categories usually go in to win the respective Oscars as well. 3 of the 5 winners in 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote, Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line, Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener, went on to also win the Oscars, and in 2004 all four recipients won the Oscars as well.