Colin Farrell, nominated in best limited TV series for The Penguin, has won his third Golden Globe award at a lively ceremony in Los Angeles that delivered a few surprises. Always adept at the podium, the Dubliner, unrecognisable in the DC series, gave one of the evening’s most amusing speeches. “No one to thank on this one. I did it all by myself,” he began with a laugh. “Just a raw, pared-away performance.” Farrell, who beat old mate Andrew Scott, nominated for Ripley, to the Globe, recalled their first onscreen collaboration. “Andrew, you were in my first film, 25 or 30 years ago,” he said of (it seems) Owen McPolin’s Drinking Crude. “You can’t even find it on Betamax. It doesn’t exist. We go back that far.”
The big winners in the film section were Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, winner of four Globes including best musical or comedy, and Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, a staggering epic concerning an architect in post-war America, which took three prizes: best drama movie, best director and, for Adrien Brody, best drama actor.
Transgender actor Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays a Mexican drug boss undergoing gender-affirming surgery in Audiard’s musical, gave a moving speech from the stage. “The light always wins over darkness,” she said. “You can put us in jail. You can beat us up. But you can never take away our soul, our resistance, our identity.” Emilia Pérez also won best original song, best film in a language other than English and, for Zoe Saldaña, best supporting actress. In truth a joint lead in the film, Saldaña paid tribute to her co-stars Gascón and Selena Gomez. “I know that it’s a competition but all I have witnessed is us showing up for each other and supporting each other,” she said.
The veteran Demi Moore, winning best actress in a comedy movie for Coralie Fargeat’s wonderfully disgusting satirical horror The Substance, was among the most popular winners of the evening. “I’ve been doing this a long time – for 45 years – and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything,” she said. “At the time, I made that mean this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have – that I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged.” The hollers as she made her way back to her seat confirmed that, seven months after The Substance brought the house down at Cannes, Moore is now a real contender for an Oscar. In an upset, she here got past presumed favourite Mikey Madison, lead of Sean Baker’s Anora.
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In an even bigger shock, the Brazilian actor Fernanda Torres, nominated for Walter Salles’s admired political drama I’m Still Here, got past the likes of Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie to take best actress in a drama film. Torres acknowledged that her mother Fernanda Montenegro, now 95, was nominated for a Globe a quarter of a century ago.
[ Golden Globes 2025: full list of winnersOpens in new window ]
Less surprising was Adrien Brody’s win in best drama film actor for his heroic performance as a holocaust survivor in The Brutalist. “This was a time, not too long ago, when I thought this might be a moment not afforded to me again,” Brody, who won an Oscar for The Pianist 22 years ago, said through tears. Lasting close to four hours, The Brutalist came into the Venice Film Festival as an unknown property and left on waves of breathless acclaim. Corbet struggled for seven years to make a film that looks as if it cost five times its modest budget. “I have to thank everyone up here who, over and over again, kept betting on this film that kept falling apart,” the director said, accepting the best drama film prize. “I just want to leave everyone with something to think about: final-cut tiebreak goes to the director. That’s a controversial statement. It shouldn’t be.”
Kieran Culkin, the closest thing to an unstoppable favourite on the night, took best supporting film actor for his turn opposite his director, as one of two Jewish cousins touring contemporary Poland in Jesse Eisenberg’s serious comedy A Real Pain. “My wife and I did a shot of tequila with Mario Lopez,” he said from stage. “I love the Golden Globes!” The former child actor, one of the stars of TV’s Succession, has been a big hit on the chat show circuit this season.
There has long been much debate as to how good a prognosticator the Globes, first presented in 1944, are for success at the Oscars. There is little crossover between the voting bodies. Originally decided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), a collection of around 90, often-obscure journalists, the Globes, always a subject of controversy, encountered near-terminal crisis in 2021 when it was revealed they had not a single black voter.
A report in the Los Angeles Times that same year revealed a dearth of financial transparency in the HFPA. Following a boycott – which saw Tom Cruise return his awards – the body was reconstituted as the Golden Globe foundation and the rights passed to Dick Clark Productions. Around 300 entertainment journalists, diversely drawn, now vote for awards that, over the last two years, have had a marginally more sophisticated flavour than their often middle-brow predecessors.
The show itself was the usual combination of sleek emollience and ramshackle clatter. Comic Nikki Glaser, little known in Ireland, proved the best host since the Globes emerged from the cave of shame two years ago. After last year’s notorious splat from host Jo Kloy, the mid-western comic managed to stay sharp without sliding into open rudeness. “Zendaya, you were so good in Dune. I woke up for all of your scenes,” she said, poking acceptable fun at the science fiction epic. Glaser, who stayed just the right side of the sourness Ricky Gervais perfected here decades ago, will surely be invited back next year. In contrast, banter between the duos presenting awards was often painful. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley were ill served with a clunky script that failed to recreate their poisonous chemistry in The Substance. Jessica Gunning, ascending to accept her best supporting TV actor prize for Baby Reindeer, managed the right sort of improvised aside. “I almost tripped. You almost saw my golden globes,” the Yorkshire actor quipped. Baby Reindeer, an unexpected hit for creator Richard Gadd, also took the prize for best TV movie or limited series. But the big winner in the TV section was the epic historical series Shōgun which took four Globes including that for best TV drama.
Some years there is a wide divergence – particularly with the best picture categories – between Globes and Oscars. In 2024, the year of Oppenheimer’s sweep, the winners of best director, best picture and all four acting prizes had already triumphed with the Globes. The current awards season does, however, feel a lot more volatile. Culkin has taken over the mantle of sure thing from Da’Vine Joy Randolph who, last year, won every best supporting actress going for The Holdovers. Much other Oscar categories remain in flux. The biggest loser of the evening was surely Baker’s Anora. The wild screwball comedy has been inked in as an Oscar front-runner since winning the Palme d’Or in May, but somehow took nothing at the Globes. The team will be aware that best picture Oscar remains in play – and that Emilia Perez is the sort of flashy title the Globes always favour – but momentum has certainly been lost. The crew behind Wicked will also be disappointed to have won only the recently inaugurated, still puzzling Globe for “best cinematic and box office achievement”. Nobody quite knows what that means.
Nominations for the Oscars will be announced on January 17th. The prizes that really matter will be handed out on March 10th.
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