‘Hustle’ wins top SAG award

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

“American Hustle” won the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding cast, boosting its already strong Academy Awards prospects.

The other nominees were “12 Years a Slave,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “August: Osage County” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”

Bradley Cooper spoke on behalf of the ensemble, which also includes Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence and Christian Bale.

Cooper hailed director David O. Russell as “the epitome of the actor’s director.”

Coming two days after Academy Award nominations, the SAG Awards, at the Shrine Auditorium just south of downtown Los Angeles, are monitored for predicting Oscar momentum.

Actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so SAG- AFTRA union members (numbering more than 165,000) have perhaps more sway in determining Academy Awards winners than any other group.

SAG’s lifetime achievement award was given to Rita Moreno, the 81-year-old “West Side Story” actress whose career has spanned Broadway, television and music. Introduced by Morgan Freeman, the much-honored Latina legend danced to the podium before a standing ovation.

Moreno serenaded the SAG audience with a few bars from “This Is All I Ask”: “And let the music play/ As long as there’s a song to sing/ And I will stay younger than spring.”