Mark Ruffalo wins SAG Award for his powerful performance in HBO’s “The Normal Heart”

My favorite victory of the night!

Mark Ruffalo has finally won a major acting prize for his performance in The Normal Heart.

Ruffalo (pictured in a scene with costar Matt Bomer) had lost the Emmy and Golden Globe but tonight he was the winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.

Ruffalo played writer and AIDS activist Ned Weeks in the film based on the play by Larry Kramer. The character of Weeks is a fictionalized version of Kramer.

The award was accepted on Ruffalo’s behalf by presenters Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong’o since the actor did not attend the ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium.

Julia Roberts, Ruffalo’s co-star and fellow producer on the film, later took the stage to present another award and dispensed with her prepared remarks to praise Ruffalo’s acting abilities and to say ‘I am so absolutely tickled to my toes that he won tonight.’

Ruffalo, who was also nominated for a SAG Award for his performance in Foxcatcher, took to Twitter during the show to explain that he had to be at work in four hours and that his wife and kids woke him up to tell him the news.

In a series of tweets he said: ‘Thank you! Thank you @ryanmurphy24 for giving me the incredible part! Thank you Larry Kramer teaching is all a little more about love. Thanks @MattBomer my dear friend and partner in #TheNormalHeart you were an inspiration and friend every day. Thank you @HBO and Dante Di Lereto, Dede Gardner and Plan B for Producing such a beautiful movie. You did the impossible. To all the people who lived through the AIDS crisis and lost the ones you loved. This award is yours. @SAGawards You are heros. Thank you @alfredMolina, Julia Roberts, Joe Mantello, Jim Parsons, Taylor Kitsch, Sean Meehan, Jonathan Groff, BD Wong, and the rest of cast’