Demi Moore Wins Best Actress at SAG Awards After 47 Years in the Union, Tells Young Actors: ‘Don’t Lose Sight of the Human Connection’

Zack Sharf

23 February 2025 at 10:14 pm·3-min read

Demi Moore continued her strong awards season run for “The Substance” by taking home the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a lead role. The victory was Moore’s third among the major Oscar precursor ceremonies. She previously won best actress prizes at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards.

“This is extraordinary and so deeply meaningful,” Moore said. “I was thinking about this night and I realized I hadn’t thought back to when I got my membership to this incredible organization. It was in 1978. I was 15, almost 16. It changed my life because it gave me meaning. It gave me purpose. It gave direction. I was a kid on my own who had no blueprint for life. I knew nothing about acting, but I watched and I listened and I learned from all of you. You have all been my greatest teachers. I am so grateful that I have continued over these so many years to be able to try and sometime succeed and sometimes fail and to be able to keep going. I could not do that without the support of my incredible team.”

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Moore continued, “As I watched and learned, as a young actor it was the casting directors and directors and producers who got me into the room to audition Your feedback meant everything. As this young actors feel like they have do it all.. don’t lose sight of the human connection. That is the work we do…to be connected to one another.”

Moore was nominated at the SAG Awards opposite Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl”), Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”) Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”) and Mikey Madison (“Anora”). While Moore has won the most best actress prizes heading into the Oscars next month, Madison is still a major contender after winning the best actress prize at the BAFTAs earlier this month. While some recent SAG best actress winners such as Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) went on to repeat at the Oscars, the category has frequently split from the Academy Awards with winners such as Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”).

As for Moore, she’s earned critical acclaim for “The Substance” dating back to the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year. She stars as Elizabeth Sparkle, a once-popular actor and TV fitness icon who decides to inject herself with an experimental serum in order to prevent her star from further fading. In her Critics’ Choice Awards acceptance speech, Moore shouted out awards bodies for giving acknowledgment to a genre movie like “The Substance.”

“I am so grateful, not just for my performance, but that you have highlighted this film, this genre. Normally, horror films are overlooked and not seen for the profundity that they can hold,” she said.

Next up for Moore is the Oscars on Sunday, March 2.

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