East End Regulars Dazzle At This Year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards

The Hamptons, being one of the world’s great playgrounds, attracts beautiful people from across the globe. The summer parties are littered with the rich and famous. You can drop into Montauk’s infamous Surf Lodge on a summer week day and find Leonardo DiCaprio sipping cocktails surrounded by his entourage of good friends, mostly young blonde women. Yet on stage in L.A. at last Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards where two stalwarts of the East End, no other than Susan Sarandon and Julianne Moore. These two best actress Oscar winners can be found walking about the Hamptons dressed in jeans and tee shirts.

With Sarandon calling Sag Harbor her home base and Moore hidden out in Montauk, these women never draw attention and most of the time go unrecognized by East Enders. Susan Sarandon was actually born Susan Abigail Tomalin on October 4, 1946. She married actor Chris Sarandon in 1967 and landed a role in the movie “Joe” by answering an ad in the paper and trying out while still in college. Most movie buffs will forever remember her in the 1975 cult classic, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” She has three children and is presently single after three marriages. And the philanthropist is always ready to lend her celebrity for national causes such as EMILY’s List. Susan, while promoting a movie, did her due diligence at the Hamptons International Film Festival answering hundreds of questions from the movie fans. Otherwise, you can often find the actress with friends sipping coffee in or near the Golden Pear in Sag Harbor, wearing sunglasses and some sort of floppy hat. Like Julie Andrews, another main stay of Sag Harbor, everyone knows her but everyone just lets her be.

Julianne Moore. (Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com)

Julianne Moore was born on December 3, 1960 in Fayetteville, North Carolina as Julie Anne Smith. Her dad was in the military growing up, which led to her family moving around a lot. The actress attended nine different schools and went to high school in Germany. She attended Boston University, where she studied theater and started her career on a television soap opera (“As the World Turns”). Her first movie was in 1990 (at the age of 30) when she starred in the film, “Tales from the Darkside, The Movie.” In 2014 she won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role as an Alzheimer’s patient in the film, “Still Alice.” Up to date, she has appeared in 62 motion pictures. She was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama, as was Sarandon. Julianne is typical Montauk. Hardly ever seen, but always out there. Those who know her say she is sweet, real low-key, and the nicest of the nice. She too has done her due diligence when supporting a film project at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Moore has two children with husband Bart Freundlich, who she married in 1993.

So as I watched the SAG awards, I felt a certain warmth when both Susan Sarandon and Julianne Moore stepped out to present awards to their fellow actors. There was just a touch of the East End featured that night.