AS IT HAPPENS: Viola Davis gives impassioned speech as she wins Outstanding Supporting Actress at 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards

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She is regarded as one of the best actresses in the world.

And Viola Davis added even more hardware to her already impressive award stand.

The 51-year-old actress won one of the biggest prizes at the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night.  

Big win: Viola Davis took home the gong for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for her role in Fences

The veteran actress took home the gong for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role and made an impassioned speech while accepting the prize.

She said thanked Fences writer August Wilson for putting the struggles of regular African-American people during the Civil Rights Movement.

She added: 'We deserve to be in the canon and at the center of any narrative out there.'

Making a stand: Julia Louis-Dreyfus won the first gong of the night - Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series - for her performance in VEEP

Shortly after it was Mahershala Ali who won Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in Moonlight.

Earlier in the night Julia Louis-Dreyfus got political during her acceptance speech as she took home the first gong of the night. 

As she won Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series  for her performance in Veep the talented star made a political statement of her own during her acceptance speech.

She poked fun at Donald Trump before taking a serious turn and opening about her father who fled France which was occupied by the Nazis during World War II.  

Celebs gathered at The Shrine Auditorium to toast another year in film and television at one of the few awards ceremonies where actors are judged by their peers.

Legend: William H. Macy won Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series for Shameless

The annual show is often seen as the best predictor for the Oscars, with most categories falling right in step with the Academy Awards. 

While the SAG awards only honour categories in acting, the best ensemble award category often offers a hint as to what film will snag best picture at the Oscars. 

The rising chorus for La La Land was suddenly missing a very conspicuous note on Sunday night.

The 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild nominated the leads of Damien Chazelle's acclaimed musical, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. 

But the perceived Oscar front-runner was notably absent in the SAGs' top category, best ensemble.

La La Land has been marching toward best-picture winner at the Oscars, picking up a nomination in the coveted category, after breaking records at the Golden Globes. Granted, La La Land, largely focused on its leads, doesn't scream ensemble.

But if it goes on to win best picture, it will be only the second to do so without a SAG ensemble nod in the category's history. 

Only Mel Gibson's Braveheart managed it 20 years ago. 

Par for the course: The entire cast of Orange Is The New Black accepted Ensemble in a Comedy Series for the third consecutive year

However, this is simply being nominated in the category. The statistics for those ensembles that win at the SAG awards is a bit different. 

The Screen Actors Guild has handed out the ensemble award 21 times (SAG only began giving out ensemble awards in 1996), but of the films that were awarded the honour only 11 went on to land best picture at the Oscars (52%). 

Still, actors, the largest group in the Academy of Motion Pictures, hold considerable sway. (SAG, though, is much larger, with about 160,000 members, compared to about 1,200 actors in the academy.) 

The best ensemble nominees were Barry Jenkins' coming-of-age tale Moonlight, Kenneth Lonergan's Massachusetts family drama Manchester by the Sea, the rousing NASA drama Hidden Figures and, in a surprise, the Viggo Mortensen-led bohemian romp Captain Fantastic. 

Manchester by the Sea led all films with four nominations, including best actor for Casey Affleck and supporting nods for Michelle Williams and Lucas Hedges.

In television, series newcomers The Crown, Westworld and Stranger Things all picked up three nominations each, alongside Emmys favorite The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and Game of Thrones.

Netlfix dominated with 17 total nominations, followed by HBO's 13.

Individual film SAG nominees have historically aligned about four-out-of-five with Oscar acting categories. The other lead actor nominees were Denzel Washington (Fences) and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge). After being passed over by the Globes, Tom Hanks, star of Clint Eastwood's Sully, might be on the outside this awards season.

Up for best actress alongside Stone are Amy Adams (Arrival), Natalie Portman (Jackie), Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) and, in a real twist, Emily Blunt, star of the tepidly reviewed The Girl on the Train.

Nominees are selected by separate movie and TV nominating panels, each comprised of more than 2,000 randomly selected SAG members.