The 2015 S.A.G. Awards

I joined AFTRA ( American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) early in my acting career. All you had to do to get in was pay them three hundred dollars. Supposedly, being in a union meant you could get an agent and work. A friend of a classmate came to a showcase from my acting class. She was an assistant casting director for "General Hospital. " She thought I did well in my scene, and suddenly I was on television. One line. April 25, 1987. That day of work and six hundred dollars got me into the Screen Actors Guild, S.A.G. I worked a few times under S.A.G. I doubled for Wallace Shawn on a now-forgotten movie, I was in the gallery at a trial on "Matlock," and a balloon vendor on the first episode of the failed series "Flash Forward." Not a distinguished career, exactly.There hasn't been much chance of work for me since we left Los Angeles five years ago. Still I keep paying dues. There's supposed to be a death benefit from the Union ( now merged into A.F.T.R.A. - S.A.G.), and they send me DVDs of nominated movies for the annual S.A.G. Awards. They also send me a code to watch episodes of nominated television shows and some movies online. In 2011, I was on the nominating committee, and I got to vote among fifty-five or so movies for which actors deserved a nomination.

This year, I received four screeners. I didn't look for performances online. I received "Birdman, " which I had already seen in Silver Spring, Maryland over Thanksgiving, "Boyhood," "The Imitation Game," and "The Theory of Everything." These movies were all nominated in the category "Outstanding Performance By A Cast in A Motion Picture," along with "Grand Budapest Hotel," which I saw last April in Staunton, Virginia. There is no other category in which I saw every nominee, and I probably won't spend much more time on this before votes are tallied next week. Maybe I'll only vote in that category.

I enjoyed all of these movies, and recommend them to anyone who asks. "The Imitation Game" and "The Theory of Everything" contain bravura performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne respectively, and they are both nominated for "Best Performance By A Male Actor in a Motion Picture" but I feel that everyone else in these movies is just supporting them. In "Birdman" there is more of an ensemble, but still mostly Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, nominated respectively for Best Performance By A Male Actor in a Leading Role and Supporting Role. So I plan to vote for "Grand Budapest Hotel" for "Outstanding Performance By A Cast In A Motion Picture." I'm guessing it won't win because it was a quirky movie and came out early in 2014. The huge cast includes Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Adrian Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, and Léa Seydoux, among dozens of others. It was one of the most satisfying movies I've seen in the last few years.

The year I was on the nominating committee, two of the biggest movies were "Bridesmaids" and "The Help." They were both notable because they were about women, with the men in supporting roles. This year, almost all of the movies are male-centered. Even in the Best Female Actor in a Leading Role category, in the two I saw anyway, the movies were more about a man than the nominated woman. I mean Rosamund Pike in "Gone Girl" and Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything." Their performances were great, but the movies were more about their men.

It's will be five years next week since we left Hollywood. I don't regret leaving the celebrity-chasers behind, but still, movie awards season is much more important to me than the NFL or college football playoffs.