Zoe Saldaña Admits ‘I Didn’t Even Know What SAG Was’ Early in Her Career as She Wins at 2025 SAG Awards

Zoe Saldaña is adding another trophy to her shelf this awards season.

The star, 46, won outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role at the 2025 SAG Awards on Sunday, Feb. 23. Also nominated for an Oscar this year, she has previously taken home the BAFTA award and Golden Globe for her work as Rita in Emilia Pérez, which costars Karla Sofìa Gascon and Selena Gomez.

“To be in this room is a true honor. This is my community. This is my circus,” she began in her speech. “Thank you to SAG and AFTRA, thank you to my fellow nominees … it was an honor to watch your performances this year, I was deeply moved.”

She continued, “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.”

Saldaña went on to thank her “working family,” including her agents and lawyers “who educate me every day on how I can make a living and support my family doing what I love.”

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“I think it’s so important for us actors to financially educate ourselves,” she said. “I want to also thank my family for just being beautiful and always supporting me. I’m proud to be part of a union that allows me to be who I am and I’ve never been questioned about where I come from and judged by how I speak or what my pronouns are.”

She concluded her speech with a touching message, saying, “I believe that everybody has the right to be who they are and Emilia Pérez is about truth and it’s 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.”

Saldaña’s fellow nominees were Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl), Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson) and Ariana Grande (Wicked).

Barbaro, 34, portrayed folk-music legend Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown alongside costars Timothée Chalamet, who played Dylan, 83, and Edward Norton, who portrayed Pete Seeger. The other two actors are also nominated for their performances at the SAG Awards, while the film’s entire cast is nominated for outstanding performance by a cast.

Barbaro was additionally recognized for her performance as Baez, 84, with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She even finally met Baez for the first time earlier this month, per photos she shared on Instagram Feb. 11.

Returning to the SAG Awards for the first time since 2023, Curtis, 66, previously won for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once en route to her Academy Award win for the same movie. She was also nominated at the SAG Awards back in 1995 for the movie True Lies.

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Curtis costars in The Last Showgirl alongside Pamela Anderson, Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka as a group of women living and struggling to pay their bills in Las Vegas. Her character Shelly is a former-showgirl-turned-cocktail waitress.

Curtis was also nominated for this role at the 2025 BAFTA Awards, but Saldaña took home that trophy on Feb. 16.

Deadwyler, 42, is a first-time nominee at the SAG Awards; she costarred with John David Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Erykah Badu, Skylar Aleece Smith, Jerrika Hinton, Gail Bean and Corey Hawkins in The Piano Lesson, an adaptation of the the renowned August Wilson play of the same name.

The movie follows a familial dispute in 1936 Pittsburgh, where one sibling in the Charles family strives to sell a prized piano, and Deadwyler’s character fiercely defends keeping the instrument.

Deadwyler was also nominated for this role at Feb. 7’s Critics Choice Awards, but Saldaña took home that trophy for her part in Emilia Pérez.

Grande, 31, entered the SAG Awards with a score of nominations for portraying Glinda in Wicked, one of 2024’s most popular movies. She also received nominations for best supporting actress at the BAFTA Awards, Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globe Awards this winter.

The actress-pop star is also nominated for Wicked in the Best Supporting Actress category at the upcoming 97th Oscars ceremony on March 2.

See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 31st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, airing on Netflix.