SAG Awards: Spotlight, Leonardo DiCaprio big winners at star-studded Los Angeles event

ABC News (Australia)
January 31, 2016

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-31/spotlight,-dicaprio-take-home-sag-awards-glory/7128112

Actors Billy Crudup, Brian d'Arcy James, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Michael Keaton and Liev Schreiber celebrate their win as best cast in a motion picture for the film Spotlight.

Spotlight, a drama about a newspaper's investigation into sexual abuse in the Catholic church, has taken out top honours at the 22nd Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards.

The awards, seen as a bellwether of the all-important Academy Awards, were being closely watched as they took place amid a controversy over the lack of African-American and minority-ethnic actors nominated for an Oscar this year.

Spotlight took the prize for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture — the SAG equivalent of an Oscar.

The film tells the true story of how a group of investigative journalists from the Boston Globe uncovered and proved child molestation and its cover-up were rife within their local Catholic church in 2001.

Spotlight ousted Beasts of No Nation, a drama about a child soldier, The Big Short, about the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Straight Outta Compton, a biopic about the N.W.A rap group, and Trumbo, about the life of acclaimed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

"This is not only for survivors of this horrific situation, this is really for the disenfranchised," Spotlight actor Michael Keaton said.