Perennial awards favorite Sideways dominated the Screen Actors Guild nominations with a field-best four nominations, including Best Ensemble Cast. The Alexander Payne comedy also nabbed three individual acting nominations as well for lead Paul Giamatti and supporting players Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen, putting it just ahead of a number of films that received three nominations each, including The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, and Hotel Rwanda; all those movies also earned Best Ensemble nominations alongside Ray and Sideways. Jamie Foxx was once again the actor of the hour, taking home three individual nominations for Ray, Collateral, and TV movie Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story as well as an Ensemble nod for Ray. Foxx was followed by Hilary Swank, who received two solo nominations, for Million Dollar Baby and HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels, and an Ensemble mention for Million Dollar Baby.

With their film nominations, the SAGs threw a number of new names into the awards season mix, including Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace), James Garner (The Notebook), Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland), Cloris Leachman (Spanglish), and Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda). A few noticeable absentees included Liam Neeson (Kinsey), Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), and the entire cast of Closer, an actor-driven movie if there ever was one. On the TV side, familiar shows (The Sopranos, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc) rubbed elbows with a handful of newcomers, including Arrested Development and Desperate Housewives, and Patricia Heaton pulled a Hilary Swank of her own, getting two individual nominations for Everybody Loves Raymond and TV movie remake The Goodbye Girl as well as an Ensemble nomination for Raymond.

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