Brits sweep the Globes

 Add your view

Helen Mirren won two awards at the Golden Globes

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie attend the Beverly Hills ceremony

Kate Winslet lost out to Helen Mirren in the best actress category

Look here too

• Gallery: The stars on the red carpet
• The Golden Globe winners in full
• Hollywood's new royalty

The Brits are today celebrating their biggest ever haul of Golden Globes.

Helen Mirren led the way at the Beverly Hills ceremony seen as a forerunner to the Oscars.

She won a best actress double for her role in The Queen and her performance in the TV drama Elizabeth I.

Gallery: All the pictures from the Golden Globes

Hollywood's new royalty

Among the nine British award winners was Sacha Baron Cohen, taking best film comedy actor for Borat, and Hugh Laurie, winning best actor in a TV drama for the second year running for his performance as a disgruntled medic in House.

Also honoured were Jeremy Irons and Emily Blunt, just two years after she was named most promising newcomer at the Evening Standard awards. The success will be a major boost to the British film and tourism industry.

Dame Helen, 61, said it was "a fantastic night for British writers and directors and actors". She confessed that filming The Queen made her question her republican impulses, adding: "At the age of 25, in 1952, Elizabeth II walked into literally the role of a lifetime, and I honestly think this award belongs to her, because I think you fell in love with her, not with me."

While The Queen missed out on the best motion picture award to thriller Babel it did get best screenplay for writer Peter Morgan.

He said he had written the script, about the repercussions within the royal family following the death of Princess Diana, because "in 1997 2.2 million people went on the streets of London, sleeping rough, bringing the biggest city in Europe to a standstill, so that a stubborn 70-year-old lady would fly from Aberdeen to London".

Elizabeth I was named best TV film, also winning 58-year-old Irons best supporting actor for his role as the Earl of Leicester.

Cohen, 35, had the audience in stitches as he recounted the scene where he engages in a naked wrestling match with co-star Ken Davitian in Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan.

"This movie was a life-changing experience," he said. "I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day.

"I refer of course to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian. Ken, when I was in that scene and I stared down and saw your two wrinkled golden globes on my chin, I thought to myself, 'I'd better win a bloody award for this'."

He thanked his fiancee Isla Fisher and, in a reference to lawsuits he and the film face from some of the participants, "every American alive who has not sued me so far".

Blunt, 23, won the first international gong of her career with a best supporting actress trophy for the BBC Poliakoff drama Gideon's Daughter.

Accepting her award, she said: "Oh God. Thank
you so much. This is just, whew!" Bill Nighy also won his first Golden Globe, best TV actor, for his performance as a PR guru gripped by family crisis in the same film. Forest Whitaker was named best actor for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the British film The Last King of Scotland.

Other big winners were Dreamgirls, named best musical or comedy motion picture, with Jennifer Hudson winning best supporting actress and Eddie Murphy taking best supporting actor for the Supremes biopic. Meryl Streep took best actress in a musical or comedy film for The Devil Wears Prada, Martin Scorsese took best director for The Departed and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima was crowned best foreign language film, beating the likes of Apocalypto and Volver. ABC series Ugly Betty, now being shown on Channel 4, was named best TV comedy.

The British successes come after what had been described as a distastrous period when uncertainty-over new tax breaks for film sparked a slump in the industry. UK Film Council chief executive John Woodward said: "We're back in business." The Globes will also propel its British winners up the career ladder, not least previously unknown newcomers such as Blunt, who has burst on to the scene in the past 12 months.

 

What's on today   What's on tomorrow