Instead of helping to clarify an otherwise jumbled movie awards season, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, sponsor of the annual Golden Globe Awards, declined to cluster its prizes around one or two films, sending supporters of more than half a dozen movies home happy on Sunday night after ceremonies at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Ridley Scott's Gladiator, a big-budget, special-effects-laden attempt to resuscitate the sword-and-sandal genre on a grand scale, won the award for best drama.
Almost Famous, a coming-of-age story based on the writer-director Cameron Crowe's experiences as a teenage rock writer, won the award for best comedy or musical, while the newcomer Kate Hudson, who played a young groupie in the film, was named best supporting actress.
PHOTO: REUTERS
In a surprise, Ang Lee (李安) won the directing award for his martial-arts fantasy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), beating out Scott, Istvan Szabo (Sunshine) and Steven Soderbergh, who was nominated for two films, Traffic and Erin Brockovich.
Lee's film also was named best foreign language film.
"I really want to thank my wife for being a role model of the tough women I portray in the movie," Lee said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The DreamWorks studio, which released Gladiator and Almost Famous, thus ended up with the night's top two awards, a year after its film American Beauty won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for best picture.
It was also a big night for some of Hollywood's highest-paid performers. Tom Hanks was chosen best actor in a dramatic motion picture for his near-solo turn in Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away, as a man marooned on a tropical island, and Julia Roberts was named best actress in a drama for Erin Brockovich, playing a legal secretary who takes on a utility.
Roberts happily refused to comply with a prompter's insistence that she cut her acceptance speech short. "You can turn that timer off, because I'm just going to go," she said. "Golly, I won, and I'm just shamelessly filled with joy."
Best actor in a comedy or musical movie went to George Clooney for O Brother Where Art Thou?, a surprise to many in the audience, especially considering his competition was Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey, Robert De Niro and John Cusack.
"I think when you list the other actors in this category, you've got to figure I'm gonna win this," Clooney said to general laughter.
Renee Zellweger was chosen best actress in a motion picture comedy or musical for Nurse Betty, playing a soap-opera-obsessed waitress. The presenter, Hugh Grant, spent a few frantic seconds wondering what had become of Zellweger, who had disappeared from her seat in the audience. It turned out that it was a reprise of an infamous incident three years ago in which Christine Lahti was away in the bathroom when she won an award.
A hyperventilating Zellweger eventually hustled onto the stage. "I have lipstick on my teeth," she said. "It's a moment I'll never forget. A moment I almost never had."
Benicio Del Toro won the best supporting actor award for Traffic, playing a police officer in a Mexican border town torn between his duty and the lure of drug lucre. Traffic also won for Stephen Gaghan's screenplay.
It has been an uncertain awards season in Hollywood, with each of the various critics groups honoring a different movie and no single film emerging as a favorite in the Oscar race. Many hoped that the Golden Globes would help clarify the situation, but they did not. Four films won two awards each: Traffic, Almost Famous, Crouching Tiger and Gladiator.
Bob Dylan won for best song for Things Have Changed from the film Wonder Boys.
The television awards, too, did not cluster around one show, though that is not so unusual.
The West Wing,"which also dominated the recent Emmy Awards, was chosen best dramatic series, and its star, Martin Sheen, won for best actor for playing the president.
Kelsey Grammer of Frasier won for best actor in a television comedy series, and Sarah Jessica Parker was named best actress in a comedy series for Sex and the City, the HBO series, which also took the award for best television comedy.
Sela Ward won best actress in a television drama for Once and Again. Best supporting actress in a television comedy, drama or miniseries went to Vanessa Redgrave for If These Walls Could Talk II.
Robert Downey Jr was enthusiastically received by the crowd when he was named best supporting actor in a television series for his recurring role on Ally McBeal. Downey was recently arrested in a Palm Springs hotel room and charged with drug possession, after having served a prison term on a previous drug charge.
"It's meant the world to me that people have been so supportive and come up to me on the street and said they're rooting for me," he said.
Judi Dench, who lost to Hudson in the supporting actress category in movies, for which she was nominated for Chocolat, won the best actress award in a television movie or miniseries for Last of the Blond Bombshells.
Brian Dennehy, who won a Tony Award in 1999 for his Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, took home the best actor award in a television movie or miniseries for recreating that stage performance.
The award for best television movie or miniseries went to Dirty Pictures, a Showtime movie about efforts to ban a controversial Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati.
Al Pacino received the Cecil B DeMille Award, an annual honor that was announced in advance, for his entire body of work.
Gladiator and Traffic had led the film field with five nominations each. Four other films had four nominations each: Almost Famous, Lasse Hallstrom's Chocolat, Erin Brockovich and Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys.
The Golden Globes are voted on by the 85 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Los Angeles-based journalists representing a variety of international magazines, newspapers, broadcast outlets and wire services.
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