LOS ANGELES (AP) — Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were the maids of honour at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, where their Deep South drama “The Help” won them acting prizes and earned the trophy for overall cast performance.

Davis won as best actress and Spencer as supporting actress for “The Help,” while Jean Dujardin was named best actor for the silent film “The Artist” and Christopher Plummer took the supporting-actor award for the father-son tale “Beginners.”

The wins boost the actors’ prospects for the same honors at the Feb. 26 Academy Awards.

In “The Help,” Davis and Spencer play black maids going public with uneasy truths about their white employers in 1960s Mississippi.

“I just have to say that the stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of colour or women. It’s all of our burden, all of us,” Davis said, accepting the ensemble prize on behalf of her “The Help” co-stars.

Accepting her best-actress award, Davis singled out two performers in the audience who inspired her early in her career: “The Help” co-star Cicely Tyson and Meryl Streep, Davis’ co-star in the 2008 drama “Doubt” and one of the nominees she beat out for the SAG prize. Streep had been nominated as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” a role that won her the dramatic actress award at the Golden Globes over Davis.