Unlike last year’s Golden Globe Awards, this year’s Globes, which took place on Sunday night, was not the first televised awards show of the awards season; that was the Critics Choice Awards, which took place last Sunday night. But this year’s Globes will almost surely have a greater influence on the shape of the Oscar nominations than did last year’s Globes or will this year’s Critics Choice Awards, given that Oscar nomination voting starts bright and early on Monday — as in, tomorrow — morning.
So, who was helped the most by the results at the Globes, which, for the third year in a row, were determined by a post-HFPA group of several hundred entertainment journalists for non-American media outlets based all around the world?
1) Hamnet and One Battle After Another
Focus’ Hamnet prevailed over formidable competition — Warners’ Sinners, Netflix’s Frankenstein and Neon’s It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value — to win best picture (drama), positioning it, at least in theory and a lot of media coverage, as the chief best picture Oscar challenger to Warners’ One Battle After Another, which was always expected to win the other best picture award, best picture (musical/comedy), and did.
Steven Spielberg, as a producer of Hamnet, accepted that film’s best picture prize (before turning over the mic to co-writer/director Chloé Zhao), which only further boosts the film’s standing, given how revered Spielberg is in the business. Additionally, Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley won best actress (drama), while One Battle’s Paul Thomas Anderson won best director and best screenplay prizes to go with his producing honor.
2) The Secret Agent and Wagner Moura
Unlike the SAG-AFTRA nominating committee that determined the Actor Awards nominations last week and shut out all films and film performances that were not in English, Globes voters have never had a problem rewarding work done in other languages, and they did a huge service to the Portuguese-language Brazilian film The Secret Agent by recognizing it with best non-English-language film (over the likes of France’s It Was Just an Accident and Norway’s Sentimental Value) and with best actor (drama) for Wagner Moura (over the likes of Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan, Jeremy Allen White for 20th Century’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere and Dwayne Johnson for A24’s The Smashing Machine).
The Secret Agent’s non-English-language film Globe win over two films that beat it at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the fest’s first-place winner (It Was Just an Accident) and runner-up (Sentimental Value), is a repeat of last week’s result at the Critics Choice Awards, and calls into question the common wisdom that those other two are stronger contenders for not only a best international feature Oscar win but also best picture Oscar noms. (Last year, I’m Still Here became the first Brazilian film ever nominated for the top Oscar; The Secret Agent now looks primed to make it two in a row!)
Meanwhile, I’ve long thought that Moura — who won Cannes’ best actor prize and was my guest on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast last week — could be a sleeper threat at the Oscars to presumptive frontrunners Timothée Chalamet (A24’s Marty Supreme) and Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), who competed against each other in the other best actor Globes category, best actor (musical/comedy), with Chalamet prevailing. Moura understood the assignment when he used his Globes acceptance speech to tease viewers about what The Secret Agent is about and why it matters.
3) If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s Rose Byrne
A Globes win means more to some than to others. Rose Byrne’s best actress (musical/comedy) victory for a challenging little indie about a woman in crisis, A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You — over the likes of One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti and the stars of two Focus films, Song Sung Blue’s Kate Hudson and Bugonia’s Emma Stone — could be a game-changer for the versatile and well-liked performer.
It is far from certain that Byrne’s movie — which, as she joked, was made for “eight-and-a-half dollars” — has even been seen by enough members of the Academy’s actors branch to make her competitive with other actresses from higher-profile films who are also vying for a best actress Oscar nom. But her Globes recognition makes it far likelier that straggling Academy members will prioritize checking out her film before casting their ballot.
4) One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor
The best supporting actress Oscar race is looking as fluid as any at the moment. Ariana Grande was the early frontrunner for Universal’s Wicked: For Good. But the critics awards were largely split between Amy Madigan for Warners’ Weapons (New York Film Critics Circle) and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another (LA Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics), with Madigan winning the most visible critical laurel, the Critics Choice Award, last week.
But on Sunday night, Taylor rebounded with a Globes win , for which she received a standing ovation — something not all acting winners received — and after which she read a moving speech. At the Actor Awards, at which all three ladies are again nominated, Taylor will now have some real wind behind her sails — to go with coattails from her film’s best ensemble nominations, which the other two are lacking.
5) Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård
Considering that most pundits, including yours truly, have thought for months that Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård was the man to beat in the best supporting actor Oscar race, given the popular veteran’s great performance and overdue status, the past week had been pretty bad for him: he lost the Critics Choice Award to Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi in a huge upset, and then, even more surprisingly, wasn’t even nominated for the SAG Award.
But Skarsgård had a much-needed rebound on Sunday night, winning the best supporting actor Globe over Elordi, One Battle’s Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn, Hamnet’s Paul Mescal and Adam Sandler for Netflix’s Jay Kelly — six years after he won a Globe for his work on TV’s Chernobyl — and talked up his “small Norwegian film with no money for advertising.”
6) Sorry Baby’s Eva Victor
Nobody looked more surprised than Eva Victor, the writer/director/lead actress of A24’s little indie Sorry, Baby, when Julia Roberts, the star of Amazon’s After the Hunt — moments after receiving a show-stopping standing ovation and mid-way through announcing the best picture (musical/comedy) award — paused to shout out Victor, who, like Roberts, had just lost to Buckley in the best actress (drama) category.
“Eva Victor is my hero,” Roberts gushed, adding the sort of publicity that money cannot buy: “Sorry, Baby — if you haven’t seen it, see it!” Something like that could make a huge difference for Victor with Oscar voters, given that Sorry, Baby — a dark comedy about the aftermath of a sexual assault — is thought to be on the bubble for a nom in the best original screenplay Oscar race. This is the sort of thing that could push it over the top.
Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.