By: Arad Tadayon
The 2025 Golden Globes, hosted by Nikki Glaser, took place on January 5th, 2025. Among the winners were interesting and surprise winners. The show was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California and attended by A-list celebrities.
The Golden Globe Awards are a prestigious ceremony honoring excellence in both film and television. Besides being the shining light in history, the Golden Globe Awards are also a celebration of Hollywood through the decades. The awards are given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association assembly of international journalists for excellence in both film and television. Accordingly, they form part of the award season, setting the stage for the Oscars and other major accolades. Unlike the Oscars, which primarily focus on film, the Golden Globes uniquely honor both cinematic and television achievements. Exclusive in nature, the Golden Globes constitute both film and television. This is a reflection of the changing times, and people increasingly see within entertainment lines blurring between film and television. The atmosphere at the Golden Globes is lively and often eccentric. It brings forth the excitement without the pompousness found at the Oscars. Consider witty exchanges between hosts, bizarre performances, and other little amusements among attendees. Over these past seventy-five years, the Golden Globes have essentially formed and still help define the entertainment industry. They have saluted thousands of stars, thrown starlit career beginnings for stars in the making, and stood beside them as they voiced their art. That is the way the Golden Globe continues, a glimmering celebration of creativity, whereas the industry keeps changing.
Demi Moore, who has been acting for over 40 years, not only got a major win as the best actress in a motion picture (musical or comedy) for her role in “The Substance,” but she also delivered a powerful and empowering speech. She started off with, “I’m just in shock right now. I’ve been doing this a long time — like, over 45 years — and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor, And I’m just so humbled and so grateful.” She continued talking about her struggles throughout her acting career by highlighting the mentality she was in, “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress. At that time, I made that mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in, and I believed that that corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete, maybe I’d done what I was supposed to do.” She then took a chance on the film, adding, “And as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called ‘The Substance, and the universe told me, ‘You’re not done.’” She finally wrapped up her speech and concluded with, “In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough or basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick, and so today, I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong.”
The other awards were as follows: the “Best Film – Drama” went to A24’s “The Brutalist,” as well as the award for “Best Director” to Brady Corbet and “Best Actor – Drama” to Adrien Brody. Shogun saw 4 awards winning “Best TV Series – Drama,” “Best TV Actress – Drama” to Anna Sawai, “Best TV Actor – Drama” to Hiroyuki Sanada, “Best Supporting Actor – TV” to Tadanobu Asano. Jodie Foster saw her fifth win at the Golden Globes for “Best TV Actress – Limited Series.” Colin Farrell won an award for his role in “The Penguin,” and Jeremy Allen White won an award for his role in “The Bear.” The other winners include “Best Film – Musical or Comedy” for Emilia Pérez, “Best TV Series – Comedy or Musical” for Hacks, “Best Limited TV Series” for Baby Reindeer, “Best Non-English Language Film” for Emilia Pérez, “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” for Wicked, “Best Original Film Score” for Challengers. There were other winners as well who all deserved their grace.
The most Golden Globes awards are held by Meryl Streep at eight wins, who is followed by Alan Alda, Angela Lansbury, Shirley Maclaine، and Jack Nicholson, all holding six wins respectively. The people who have five wins are Ed Asner, Carol Burnett, Laura Dern, Jessica Lange, Rosalind Russell, Kate Winslet, and Nicole Kidman. Interestingly, at the 46th Golden Globe Award, there was a three-way tie for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Jodie Foster for The Accused, Shirley MacLaine for Madame Sousatzka, and Sigourney Weaver for Gorillas in the Mist). The only Iranian to ever win a Golden Globe is director Asghar Farhadi, who won an award for his movie “The Separation.”
There were a lot of historic moments in the Golden Globes history with the most impactful being the takeover of “The Rat Pack.” It was the year 1958. The Golden Globes were neither old nor glamorous then but had a pretty sober tone. Enter the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford. These charismatic entertainers, known for their suave style, infectious energy, and penchant for good times, decided to inject some much-needed life into the proceedings. Not initially sanctioned, they crashed the stage uninvited and proceeded to charm and entertain the audience with their own special brand of wit and showmanship. They sang, told a few dirty jokes, heckled the presenters, and broke down the stuffy ceremony atmosphere, replacing it with one of excitement and spontaneity. The extemporaneous Rat Packer appearance changed everything for the Golden Globe Awards. It won public affection. The normally squeaky-clean Hollywood Foreign Press Association was, at first, aghast at the excitement the Rat Pack had created around itself. Indeed, the official invitation to host the Golden Globes was extended to them the next year. They just reveled in that role, turning it into a magnificent and high-voltage star event. Their influence on the Golden Globes was profound. They helped to establish the awards show as a glamorous and entertaining event, setting the stage for the raucous and star-studded ceremonies we know today. They also imparted this element of dramatizing the event that would eventually set the stage for the wild, raucous, star-studded, trunk-full ceremonies that the rest is history.
The Golden Globes gives the winners a platform to speak their minds and this causes some interesting interactions. For example, Meryl Streep criticized Trump at the Golden Globes 2017 by stating, “There was nothing good about it, but it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing.” Other people like Jim Carrey use it as a platform to criticize the awards themselves while presenting. He said, “Thank you, I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. You know, when I’m going to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shut-eye. And when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dreams. No sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this, this terrible search. For what I know ultimately won’t fulfill me. But these are important these awards. I don’t want you to think just because you blew up our solar system alone, you wouldn’t be able to find us or any of human history with the naked eye, but from our perspective, this is huge. One more time, here are the nominees for Best Motion Picture Comedy.
