The 26th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, honoring the best achievements in film and television performances for the year 2019, were presented on January 19, 2020 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.
Leonardo DiCaprio got the chance to honor one of his idols and very first big-screen co-stars. At the 2020 SAG Awards, Leo presented Robert De Niro with Lifetime Achievement Honors.
“The role of an actor is to make us feel they take us to new places, using their skills to guide us towards a deeper understanding of humanity,” DiCaprio said before showing a reel of some of De Niro’s most notable roles. “For almost 50 years, Robert De Niro’s performances have done exactly that. He has astounded us with his portrayals of heroes and villains, loaners and leaders, dreamers and sociopaths. His characters have echoed through our culture in iconic films like Mean Streets, Taxi driver, The Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, The King of Comedy, Heat, Jackie Brown, Goodfellas, Casino, The Godfather II and Raging Bull. ”
Leo continued: “Robert De Niro is elemental. It feels like he’s always been here and always will be here. Like so many of you here tonight, he was the actor I watched as a young man obsessed with films. At 13 years old my father took me to the movies one afternoon to see [De Niro’s 1988 film] Midnight Run, and as the lights went down, he turned to me and said, ‘If you really want to be an actor and get into this profession, if you want to understand what great acting is, you watch that man onscreen.” Then he went on to recount auditioning for a role opposite De Niro several years later: “To share scenes with an artist of his magnitude was monumental,” DiCaprio said of reading scenes with De Niro — who played his abusive father figure — for the 1993 drama This Boy’s Life. “It was a life-changing experience. His commitment to character specificity in detail and fearless pursuit of authenticity in his work have influenced not only myself, but entire generations. His collaborations with Martin Scorsese, inarguably, the greatest partnership in cinema history have given us career long explorations of the human condition. ”
Then he announced that he would star in Killers of the Flower Moon with De Niro: “I’ve learned so much from the both of them, I’m fortunate to call them collaborators, Bob since This Boy’s Life and Marty since Gangs of New York. And after 30 years, to work alongside Bob again in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming drama Killers of the Flower Moon is a true honour.”
Also in the film categories, Leo was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role but his fellow nominee, Joaquin Phoenix won the prize and started his speech with an anecdote about DiCaprio, whom Phoenix said has been an inspiration to him for over 25 years.
On the other hand, Leo’s co-star in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Brad Pitt picked up the best supporting actor SAG Award for his performance as Cliff Booth.
Check out this interview with Leonardo at the 26th Annual SAG Awards: