The 2014 SAG Awards nominees have been announced, and in what should come as a surprise to no one, "12 Years a Slave" leads the nominations pack with four nominations. 

Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett and Julia Roberts are among the big names that will vie for the 20th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards after nominations for the awards were announced Wednesday morning.


It was a list of contenders that included some surprising nominees such as "Rush"s' Daniel Bruhl and "Enough Said" James Gandolfini, as well as shocking omissions such as "All is Lost" star Robert Redford, who has received ecstatic notices for his performance as a shipwrecked man.  Martin Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street," which had earned some glowing notices and has been seen as a major awards contender, was completely shut out.


On the film front, "12 Years a Slave" showed considerable strength, scoring nods for stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender and for its cast. Other films that were popular with SAG voters included "Lee Daniels' The Butler," "Dallas Buyers Club" and "August: Osage County" all of which earned three nominations. 

In the nominations announced Wednesday, the guild singled out Somali native Barkhad Abdi for male actor in a supporting role, for playing a pirate in Paul Greengrass' thriller "Captain Phillips." Also receiving nominations were Lupita Nyong'o, who plays a brutalized slave in McQueen's film, and Winfrey, who plays Whitaker's wife in "Lee Daniels' The Butler," in the female actor in a supporting role category.


"It's really an honor," Abdi said in an interview about his nomination. "A negative light has been shed on Somalia for a long time, and this [nomination] will be a positive light.... I lived in Somalia. I lived through war. I put myself in the character's shoes. I put all that in my head."


The 20th SAG Awards nominations did little to clarify Oscar's best picture race. The guild's motion picture cast award is typically one of the more reliable early indicators of how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will vote on the Oscars. But of the films nominated for the ensemble prize, only "12 Years a Slave" is considered a clear Oscar favorite.

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