Cillian Murphy won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama at an amusing ceremony in Beverly Hills, California on Sunday night that saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, featuring the Cork actor in the lead role, wallop its famous rival Barbie.
In an upset, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, a wild feminist fantasy produced by Dublin’s Element Pictures, beat Barbie to best comedy or musical film. Andrew Lowe and Ed Guiney, veterans of the Irish film industry, are among the winning producers. Poor Things also won top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September.
Murphy triumphed over Barry Keoghan, nominated for Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, and Andrew Scott, up for Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, in a shortlist that, remarkably, was 50 per cent Irish.
“To all my fellow nominees, if you’re Irish or not, you’re all legends,” he said.
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Calm under pressure, Murphy seemed most concerned about the aftermath of opening celebrations.
“First question: do I have lipstick all over my nose? I’m just going to leave it,” he began. “I knew from the first moment I walked on a Christopher Nolan set it was going to be different. I could tell by the level of rigour, the level of focus, the level of dedication.”
Murphy now looks a strong favourite to become the first person born in Ireland to win best actor at the Oscars.
The so-called Barbenheimer phenomenon that, last summer, pitched the biopic of the father of the atomic bomb against Greta Gerwig’s variation on the fashion doll reverberated throughout the show at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Oppenheimer won the Globes battle comfortably, topping the charts with five awards. Barbie won two, the same as Poor Things.
Lanthimos appeared most happy about meeting a musical idol. “I just wanted to speak to Bruce Springsteen all night,” he said. “We have the same birthday.”
Emma Stone got past Margot Robbie, Barbie herself, to win best actress in a comedy or musical for Poor Things.
“Playing Bella was unbelievable,” she said of her weirdly revivified protagonist. “I see this as a romcom. But Bella falls in love with life itself rather than a person and she accepts the good and the bad and equal measure. That really made me look at life differently.”
[ Golden Globes 2024: full list of winnersOpens in new window ]
The greatly respected Paul Giamatti won the comedy or musical actor award for playing a grumpy teacher in Alexander Payne’s charming The Holdovers. Lily Gladstone was a popular winner of best actress in a drama for her role as a misused native American woman in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Nolan acknowledged a late collaborator from his The Dark Knight when accepting the award for best director.
“The only time I’ve ever been on this stage before was accepting one of these on behalf of our dear friend Heath Ledger,” he said. “That was complicated and challenging for me. And in the middle of speaking, I glanced up and Robert Downey Jr caught my eye and gave me a look of love and support – the same look he’s giving me now.”
[ Cillian Murphy: ‘I don’t like watching myself – it’s like, ‘Oh, f**king hell’Opens in new window ]
There was a surprise in best screenplay. Neither wing of Barbenheimer triumphed as Justine Triet, writer-director of the Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall, was summoned to the podium. The French courtroom drama also beat a competitive field that included Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Celine Song’s Past Lives to best film not in English. Triet’s picture is now confirmed as a serious player in the ongoing awards carnival.
The best supporting prizes went to strong favourites. Downey Jr took best supporting actor for his turn as Lewis Strauss, the protagonist’s tormentor in Oppenheimer.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who movingly plays a bereaved mother in The Holdovers, has already won practically every critics prize going and, unsurprisingly, took the best supporting actress Globe. She seems certain to get the corresponding Oscar.
Two new awards were presented this year. Globes favourite Ricky Gervais – not in attendance – took the prize for best stand-up comic on television. The debuting category honouring “cinematic and box office achievement” has been baffling observers since its announcement. That award went to Barbie. It was the highest grossing film of the year (the highest-grossing ever in Ireland). So that made some sort of sense.
Taylor Swift, in attendance, will have been disappointed not to win for Taylor Swift: the Era Tour, the highest grossing concert film ever.
Jo Koy, a popular Filipina-American comedian, hosted in mainstream fashion that contrasted markedly with Jerod Carmichael’s unsettlingly political set last year and with the Gervais performances that brought the Globes some edge in the first two decades of the century.
The Globes also honoured television with cooking dramedy The Bear and feud comedy Beef both picking up three awards. Inevitably, the last series of Succession topped the charts with four Globes.
The charabanc now advances to the Oscar nominations on January 23rd.
The 81st Golden Globes winners
Best Motion Picture – Drama: Oppenheimer.
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: Poor Things.
Best Director: Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama: Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: Emma Stone – Poor Things.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy: Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers.
Best Supporting Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture: Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers.
Best Supporting Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture: Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer
Best Motion Picture – Animated: The Boy and the Heron.
Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language: Anatomy of a Fall.
Cinematic and Box Office Achievement: Barbie.
Best Screenplay: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari – Anatomy of a Fall.
Best Original Score: Ludwig Göransson – Oppenheimer.
Best Original Song: What Was I Made For? (Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell) – Barbie.
Best Television Series – Drama: Succession.
Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy: The Bear.
Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Beef.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama: Kieran Culkin – Succession.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama: Sarah Snook – Succession.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy: Jeremy Allen White – The Bear.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy: Ayo Edebiri – The Bear.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Steven Yeun – Beef.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Ali Wong – Beef.
Best Supporting Performance by an Actor in a Series, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Matthew Macfadyen – Succession.
Best Supporting Performance by an Actress in a Series, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Elizabeth Debicki – The Crown.
Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television: Ricky Gervais – Ricky Gervais: Armageddon.
