WHO IS BEHIND SAG AWARDS?

Preparations are made for the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards by producers Kathy Connell and Jo Beth Williams.

Producer Kathy Connell keeps pretty busy taking care of the screen actors guild 365 days a year otherwise known as SAG. While an elected official of the SAG board, Kathy spearheaded the idea for an awards show where actors honor each other for outstanding performances.

For 13 years now Kathy has been behind the scenes preparing the Shrine Auditorium for the sit down dinner club ambience. Despite her passion for the show Kathy remains neutral when it comes to predicting the winners.

“I don’t have any personal favorites because I admire these actors so much. How do you pick a favorite? How do you pick a favorite from Forest Whitaker or Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt or any of these guys. They’re all wonderful actors and these casts in these movies are terrific.”

A silent auction was held to benefit The Screen Actors Guild Foundation, the charitable arm that supports needy actors. The Big Chill star Jo Beth Williams, a producer for SAG talks about the goals of the foundation.

“It does a lot of fantastic things not only for actors in need, actors who have catastrophic health issues, actors who haven’t worked in several years; sometimes actors wind up living out of their cars believe it or not. The foundation helps them in times of need but we also have national programs, one of them is called Book Pals; it’s actors all across the country going into schools and hospitals reading books to kids who are trying to inspire kids to love the written word. Illiteracy is a real problem in this country and actors and performers really want to help with that because the written word means to much to us.”

Some of the celebrity collectibles auctioned off included Beyonce’s costume for Dreamgirls with the shoes, signed scripts from The Office and Weeds, and a book of photos from the making of Babel including Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett’s autographs.