Sheila McCarthy (pictured), Stuart Hughes and Saara Chaudry all won outstanding performance awards Saturday night at the 16th edition of the ACTRA Awards in Toronto.
McCarthy took home the award for outstanding performance by an actress for her role in Wildling Pictures-produced feature Cardinals. Also nominated for the prize was Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Sarah Gadon (Alias Grace) and Kristin Booth (The Kennedys After Camelot).
Hughes won the best performance by an actor prize for his role in The Drawer Boy, produced by Open City Works. Hughes beat out Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Kim’s Convenience), Tony Nappo (Split Seconds) and Ronnie Rowe Jr. (Black Cop), who were also nominated in the category.
Meanwhile, The Breadwinner‘s Chaudry bested David Berni (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), Cory Doran (3 Amigonauts), Colin Doyle (Fangbone) and Carter Hayden (Hotel Transylvania) to win in the voice performance category. The Breadwinner, which is nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature, is produced by Toronto’s Aircraft Pictures, Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon and Luxembourg’s Melusine Productions.
Elsewhere, the Members Choice Series Ensemble Award went to Baroness Von Sketch Show (Frantic Films) and, as previously announced, actor and producer Jennifer Podemski received the 2018 Award of Excellence.
The evening also saw attendees wearing black in support of the #MeToo movement.
“We have a window of opportunity to look deeply within ourselves as an industry, to make restitution for past offenses, and affect real cultural change so we can simply behave better with each other. We cannot go back to the way things were,” said ACTRA president Theresa Tova.