It was admiration at first sight when Viola Davis and Cicely Tyson met up on the red carpet at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, with Tyson approaching Davis from behind as she was being interviewed.
“I said, ‘That’s my Viola.’ I could tell her from the back,” Tyson said after “The Help” co-stars embraced and posed for photos together.
Tyson said she was pleasantly surprised by the reaction she got to her small role in “The Help.”
“I did not expect this reaction my character would have that put it, for me, on a whole other level,” the 78-year-old former Oscar nominee said. “Oprah (Winfrey) said to me, ‘You blew me away.’”
Davis, an Oscar nominee for her role in the movie, described herself as “a little brown-skinned girl in an Afro who had a big dream.”
She was living the dream Sunday, working the carpet with her husband, Julius Tennon.
“It’s her show. I’m just here to support her and make her feel comfortable,” Tennon said.
“I’m shy,” Davis added.
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Armie Hammer, nominated as supporting actor for his role in “J. Edgar,” stopped on the SAG Awards red carpet long enough to make light of being on the wrong side of the law in West Texas after a drug-sniffing dog discovered marijuana in his car.
“Be more aware of your surroundings next time you’re traveling with contraband,” quipped Hammer, who played FBI director Hoover’s friend and fellow lawman, Clyde Tolson, in the film.
The 25-year-old actor spent about a day in jail before paying a $1,000 bond after his Nov. 20 arrest in Sierra Blanca, Texas.
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Christopher Plummer, the winner of this year’s supporting actor SAG award, gave much of the credit for his win, not to mention his long life, to his “long-suffering wife Elaine who 43 years ago came to my rescue.”
Plummer had a well-known fondness for drinking when he met Elaine Taylor, who eventually became his third wife.
“She said, ‘Listen, if you’re serious about getting together in life, you’ve got to stop drinking,’” Plummer said backstage. “She was dead right and she was quite vicious about it. She did save my life because I was really going downhill.”
Plummer won for his role in “Beginners,” portraying an elderly dad who comes out as gay after his wife’s death. If he repeats that triumph at this year’s Academy Awards he would become the oldest actor to win an Oscar at age 82.
“I can’t talk about that because it’s miles down the road,” he said.
Asked if he would like to win, Plummer said jokingly, “No, I think it’s frightfully boring.
“We don’t go into this business preoccupied by awards. If we did, we wouldn’t last five minutes.”
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