Zoe Saldaña Accepts Best Supporting Actress At The 2025 SAG Awards: "This Is My Community"

“I am proud to be a part of a union that allows me to be who I am,” the Emilia Pérez standout said.

Published: February 24, 2025

Zoe Saldaña Accepts Best Supporting Actress At The 2025 SAG Awards: "This Is My Community" — Zoe Saldaña in Saint Laurent. Photo: Frazer Harrison/WireImage via Saint Laurent

Emilia Pérez standout Zoe Saldaña continued a decisive awards-season streak tonight with a Best Supporting Actress win at the SAG Awards. During her acceptance speech, she thanked SAG-AFTRA for “protecting her” and called on her fellow actors to tell stories that “live within the spectrum of artistic freedom.”

Only days ago, Saldaña took home a BAFTA for her performance as Rita, a Mexico City lawyer who helps arrange a secret gender-confirmation surgery for a cartel boss, in Jacques Audiard’s polarising French film. Now, having won a Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, BAFTA, and SAG Award for the film, Saldaña is posed as the frontrunner for her category at the upcoming Academy Awards next weekend.

After the BAFTAs, Saldaña told journalists that she was “dedicating all of these awards and the film Emilia Pérez to my nephew, Eli. He is the reason—they are the reason—I signed up to do this film in the first place. So as the proud aunt of a trans life, I will always stand with my community of trans people.”

Read her SAG Awards acceptance speech below.

“To be in this room is a true honour. This is my community. This is my circus. Thank you to SAG and AFTRA. Thank you to my fellow nominees...It was an honour to watch your performances this year. I was deeply moved.

I got my first SAG card in 1998, and I didn’t even know what SAG was, and I am grateful that my mother and my father and my sisters looked it up and helped me educate myself on what it means to be a part of a union that protects me so that I can make a living out of this crazy, crazy industry...I think it’s so important for us actors to financially educate ourselves...I am proud to be a part of a union that allows me to be who I am, and I’ve never been questioned about where I come from or judged by how I speak or what my pronouns are. I believe that everybody has the right to be who they are, and Emilia Pérez is about truth and it is about love, and I think that us as actors—now more than ever before—we really have to tell stories that are beautiful and thought-provoking and live within the spectrum of artistic freedom.

Thank you so much. I’m so honoured.”

This article was first seen on ELLE US.