Has Keke Palmer been saying nope to the SAG Awards for 20 years?
Whatever the reason the One of Them Days starhasn’t been at the ceremony where actors celebrate actors in two decades, she made a dazzling return to the big show Feb. 23 at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, where she’s scheduled to present.
The 31-year-old wore a black strapless Chanel gown with gold detailing atop the bodice, accessorized with dramatic black opera gloves, Brilliant Earth earrings and spicy ginger locks. (See all the red carpet fashion at the 2025 SAG Awards.)
Meanwhile, the actress and host of the Baby, It’s Keke Palmer podcast has been so dang busy that it’s easy to forget she’s been doing this since she was a kid, having made her film debut in 2004’s Barbershop 2: Back in Business.
When she was 10.
And she was only 11 when she attended the SAG Awards for the first time in 2005, as a nominee for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for The Wool Cap.
Meanwhile, the two-time Emmy winner—for Outstanding Game Show Host for Password and Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series for Turnt Up With the Taylors—has been candid about the obstacles that came with being a child actor.
And a super-successful one at that, Palmer having really broken through in 2006’s Akeelah and the Bee before starring in the Disney Channel’s Jump In! movie and True Jackson, VP.
“At a young age in the child entertainer world, your emotions are always the last thing that people care about,” she said on InStyle‘s Ladies First with Laura Brown podcast in 2021. “I think you get really quickly into being a people-pleaser and trying to be everything that everybody wants you to be. And so I think in a lot of that, you end up being misunderstood. When you’re not always being agreeable, you’re a brat.”
She continued, “It’s always been a bit of a thing for me because people have had all these expectations of who they want me to be at a very young age: How they want me to act and how they want me to respond. I’ve fought a lot of that most of my adult life, and I’m still new into my adult life.”
And now here she is, a seasoned soul channeling old Hollywood glamour at the SAG Awards. See all the stars who shined on the red carpet tonight, each with their own story about what it means to them to be an actor:
Ariana Grande
Timothee Chalamet
Selena Gomez
Cynthia Erivo
Leighton Meester
Adam Brody
Zoe Saldaña
Keke Palmer
Kieran Culkin
Millie Bobby Brown
Demi Moore
Colman Domingo
Kristen Bell
Jeremy Allen White
Mikey Madison
Kerry Washington
Jeremy Strong
Jamie Lee Curtis
Michelle Yeoh
Daniel Craig
Pamela Anderson
Jane Fonda
Ralph Fiennes
Quinta Brunson
Anna Sawai
Elle Fanning
Colin Farrell
Nicola Coughlan
Ebon Moss-Bachrach
Lily Gladstone
