BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Jennifer Lawrence has won a lead-actress Golden Globe for the oddball romance Silver Linings Playbook, while supporting-acting prizes went to Christoph Waltz for the slave-revenge tale Django Unchained and Anne Hathaway for the musical Les Miserables.
The wins Sunday firm up their prospects for Hollywood’s top honours at the Feb. 24 Academy Awards.
Former President Bill Clinton upstaged Hollywood’s elite with a surprise appearance to introduce Steven Spielberg’s Civil War epic Lincoln, which was up for best drama.
The film chronicles Abraham Lincoln’s final months as he tries to end the war and find common ground in a divided Congress to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.
Lincoln’s effort was “forged in a cauldron of both principle and compromise,” Clinton said. “This brilliant film shows us how he did it and gives us hope that we can do it again.”
Amy Poehler, co-host of the Globes with Tina Fey, gushed afterward, “Wow, what an exciting special guest! That was Hillary Clinton’s husband!”
Lawrence won as best actress in a musical or comedy for her role as a troubled widow in a shaky new relationship.
The Globe winners in musical or comedy categories often aren’t factors at the Oscars, which tend to favour heavier dramatic roles.
But Silver Linings Playbook is a crowd-pleasing comic drama with deeper themes than the usual comedy. And Lawrence — a 2010 Oscar nominee for her breakout film Winter’s Bone who shot to superstardom with The Hunger Games — delivers a nice mix of humour and melancholy.
“What does this say? I beat Meryl,” Lawrence joked as she looked at her award, referring to fellow nominee and multiple Globe winner Meryl Streep. Lawrence went on to thank her mother for believing in her and her father for making her maintain a sense of humour.
Hathaway’s win came for her role as a doomed single mother in the big-screen adaptation of the stage musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel.
“Thank you for this lovely blunt object that I will forevermore use as a weapon against self-doubt,” Hathaway said, cradling her trophy.
Waltz won supporting actor for his role as a genteel bounty hunter who takes on an ex-slave as apprentice.
The win was Waltz’s second supporting-actor prize at the Globes, both of them coming in Quentin Tarantino films.
Waltz’s violent but paternal and polite Django character is a sharp contrast to the wickedly bloodthirsty Nazi he played in his Globe and Oscar-winning role in Tarantino’s 2009 tale Inglourious Basterds.
“Let me gasp,” said Waltz, whose competition included Django co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Quentin, you know that my indebtedness to you and my gratitude knows no words.”
Lincoln came in with seven nominations to lead the Globes, but it went zero-for-four on its first categories, including supporting actress for Sally Field and supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones. The film also lost for screenplay, a prize that went to Tarantino for Django Unchained.
Tarantino thanked his cast and also the group of friends to whom he reads work-in-progress for reaction.
“You guys don’t know how important you are to my process. I don’t want input. I don’t want you to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong. Heavens forbid,” Tarantino said.
“When I read it to you, I hear it through your ears, and it lets me know I’m on the right track.”
The Scottish tale Brave won for best animated film. It was the sixth win for Disney’s Pixar Animation unit in the seven years since the Globes added the category.
Austrian director Michael Haneke’s old-age love story Amour, a surprise best-picture nominee for the Oscars, won the Globe for foreign-language film.
The top prize winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival, “Amour” is a grim yet moving portrait of an elderly woman tended by her husband as she is incapacitated by age.
Pop star Adele and co-writer Paul Epworth won for best song for their theme tune to the James Bond adventure “Skyfall.”
“Oh, my God!” Adele gushed repeatedly, before offering gratitude to the group that presents the Globes. “I’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press. I never thought I’d say that.”
The prize for musical score went to Toronto composer Mychael Danna for the lost-at-sea tale “Life of Pi.”
Show hosts Fey and Poehler, who co-starred in the 2008 big-screen comedy “Baby Mama,” had a friendly rivalry at the Globes. Both were nominated for best actress in a TV comedy series, Fey for “30 Rock” and Poehler for “Parks and Recreation.”
“Tina, I just want to say that I very much hope that I win,” Poehler told Fey at the start of the show.
“Thank you. You’re my nemesis. Thank you,” Fey replied.
Among TV winners, Julianne Moore won a best-actress Globe for her role as Sarah Palin in “Game Change,” which also was picked as best TV miniseries or movie and earned Ed Harris a supporting-actor prize. Best actor in a miniseries or movie went to Kevin Costner for “Hatfields & McCoys.” ”Homeland“ was named best TV drama series, and its stars Claire Danes and Damian Lewis received the dramatic acting awards. Maggie Smith won as supporting actress for ”Downton Abbey.“
The Globes are in a rare place this season, coming after the Oscar nominations, which were announced earlier than usual and threw out some shockers that left the Globes show a little less relevant.
Key Globe contenders lined up largely as expected, with Spielberg’s Civil War saga “Lincoln” leading with seven nominations and two CIA thrillers — Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” and Ben Affleck’s “Argo” — also doing well.
All three films earned Globe nominations for best drama and director. Yet while “Lincoln,” ”Argo“ and ”Zero Dark Thirty“ grabbed best-picture slots at Thursday’s Oscar nominations, Bigelow and Affleck were snubbed for directing honours after a season that had seen them in the running for almost every other major award.
The Globe and Oscar directing fields typically match up closely. This time, though, only Spielberg and “Life of Pi” director Lee had nominations for both. Along with Spielberg, Lee, Bigelow and Affleck, Tarantino was nominated for directing at the Globes. At the Oscars, it’s Spielberg, Lee, “Silver Linings Playbook” director David O. Russell and two surprise picks: veteran Austrian filmmaker Haneke for “Amour” and first-time director Benh Zeitlin for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
The Globe hosts had a wisecrack at the expense of James Cameron, Bigelow’s ex-husband. Poehler noted that she had not been following the controversy over “Zero Dark Thirty,” which has drawn criticism for indicating torture was pivotal in producing the tip that led to Bin Laden.
But “when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who was married for three years to James Cameron,” Poehler said.