There’s something about Jessie Buckley—the British Vogue cover star fills a room with warmth. At the 2026 Golden Globes, after picking up the statuette for best female actor (drama) for her devastatingly emotional performance in Hamnet, she summed up her delight. “This is not a normal situation to be in,” she said, grinning broadly.
But then the Irish actress immediately made the glitzy awards ceremony feel like her own front room, talking with her bubbling, natural enthusiasm about her role as Agnes, wife of William Shakespeare, in director Chloé Zhao’s profound re-imagining of the creation of Hamlet as a story of grief. “It was such an extraordinary set to be part of because we were telling the story of probably the most famous Brit that ever lived, and we had a Chinese director, a lot of Irish, and mostly Polish crew.”
She went on to thank Tomasz Sternicki, the grip on the movie, for making soup on set. “It was delicious.” She concluded: “I love what I do, and I love being part of this industry.” That spirit of appreciation for the sheer privilege of being allowed to make films with something to say filled the ceremony.
No longer the boozy get-together of old, the Globes have been streamlined so that they are now very much part of the slick build-up to the Academy Awards on March 15. Their division into two film genres—musical or comedy and drama—always makes it confusing to read the runes of the rest of the awards season, but there was no doubt of the two frontrunners that emerged: Hamnet and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which won four prizes.
On the surface, the two movies couldn’t be more different. Hamnet is a powerful, deeply felt study of grief and its impact on art and life; One Battle After Another is a spectacular semi-comic epic centered on Leonardo DiCaprio’s clueless ex-revolutionary who finds himself in the grip of the forces of reaction and hysteria in a timeless America. Yet both are made by visionary directors who believe in the power of film to transform the way people think. “I love doing what I do, so this is just fun,” said Anderson, in one of his many speeches of the night.
Hamnet won two awards, taking the best picture (drama) prize, slightly unexpectedly, because some pundits had felt the Globe might go to Ryan Coogler’s radical Sinners, a popular and critical success which brings the blues and vampires into a sensational collision in the American South. Zhao looked genuinely surprised and made a point of singling out Coogler’s brilliance in her acceptance speech, which concluded with a tribute to the way that filmmaking allows people to be seen. “Let’s keep our hearts open, let’s keep seeing each other, and allowing ourselves to be seen,” she said.
Meanwhile, One Battle After Another, based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, cemented its position as the Oscar frontrunner, winning the Globes for best picture (musical or comedy), best director, best screenplay, and best supporting female actor for Teyana Taylor, who makes a brilliant on-screen impact as DiCaprio’s fellow revolutionary and lover. Her speech, one of the most tearful of the night, ended with her dedication of her award to “my brown sisters and little brown girls watching tonight… We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter and our dreams deserve space.”
Anderson’s multiple speeches contained a shout-out to Michael De Luca, chairperson of the beleaguered Warner Bros, now subject to a bidding war between Netflix and Paramount. This is the studio that backed both Sinners (which is the highest grossing original film in the past 15 years) and One Battle After Another. “About 25, 30 years ago, he came into my life and he wanted to be my champion and he single-handedly has supported me and the movies that I wanted to make. He said he had a dream of running a studio one day, and he was going to let directors do whatever the hell they wanted.” Anderson, who has never won a Golden Globe before, also paid tribute to his assistant director Adam Somner, with whom he has worked with for many years, and who died in 2024.
Elsewhere, Timothée Chalamet is the man to beat for the best-actor Oscar after taking the best male actor (musical or comedy) for his jittery, fervent performance as Marty Mauser in Josh Safdie’s screwball table tennis extravaganza Marty Supreme. Chalamet, who has failed to win a Globe in four previous nominations, has made no secret of his desire to win the Oscar, and he will have done his chances no harm with a gracious acceptance speech, one of the best of the night.
“My dad instilled in me a spirit of gratitude growing up. ‘Always be grateful for what you have.’ It’s allowed me to leave the ceremony in the past empty-handed with my head held high, grateful just to be here. But I’d be lying if I said those moments didn’t make this moment that much sweeter.”
He was also the center of one of the best jokes of the night, when Don Cheadle “helped” George Clooney (whose subtle performance in Jay Kelly lost out to Chalamet) to present an award by reminding him of how long it was since he himself won a prize. “Timothée Chalamet was three when you last won,” Cheadle said, gleefully.
In the best actor (drama) category, the Brazilian actor Wagner Moura beat better-known stars such as Dwayne Johnson, Oscar Isaac, and Michael B. Jordan (who played twin brothers in Sinners) for his performance in the political thriller The Secret Agent, while Stellan Skarsgård took the best male actor in a supporting role for his performance as a monstrous father in the Norwegian family drama Sentimental Value ahead of actors including Paul Mescal (for Hamnet) and Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another.
Both Moura and Skarsgård are now virtually guaranteed Oscar nominations, though they may not necessarily win. The same is true of Rose Byrne, who took the best female actor in a musical or comedy for her role as a harassed mother of a sick child in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a film—she joked—“that was made in 25 days for $8.50.” Her success establishes her as the only true contender to Buckley’s triumphal parade to the Oscar podium.
Other films now look less likely to do well. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein went into the Globes with five nominations but emerged empty handed; Wicked: For Good also failed to pick up any awards. Slightly surprisingly, The Secret Agent won best film (non-English language) shutting out both Sentimental Value and It was Just an Accident, directed by the Iranian democracy campaigner Jafar Panahi.
Sinners won two Globes—for best score for Ludwig Göransson and for cinematic and box office achievement—which feels a bit like a consolation prize. Its success is likely to be replicated at the Oscars. But it is One Battle After Another, a film that seems to chime remarkably with the febrile mood of the world today, that is now the film to beat.
See Every Look From the 2026 Golden Globes Red Carpet:
