With the announcement of the winner of the Golden Globe Award for best actress in a motion picture – drama, the 2024 awards have created history.
There were a number of actors that were considered for the award, including Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall), Annette Bening (Nyad), Greta Lee (Past Lives), and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla). However, Gladstone emerged victorious and was awarded the medal.
In the beginning of her acceptance speech, Gladstone started by speaking in the Blackfeet language, which is an Algonquian language that is spoken by the people who are known as the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi. Then, she went back to conversing in English, and as she was gushing about her community, she was overcome with happiness and tears of delight at her success.
I adore each and every person in this room. “I am at a loss for words,” she said. “I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, a beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this here with my mom, who, even though she’s not Blackfeet, worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.”
Gladstone, who is 37, said “I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, up here because, in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera.”
This [victory] is a historic one, the actress remarked once she had reached that point. This is not something that is just mine. I’m now holding it in my hand. I am holding it with all of my lovely sisters who are starring in the movie at this table over here, and my mother, Tantoo Cardinal, is standing on all of your shoulders. I am grateful to you.”
Then, Gladstone expressed gratitude to Martin Scorsese, the director and co-writer of the film, as well as to Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, the actors who played the roles of the protagonists, for “changing things” in this profession. “I am grateful to you for being such a friend. Her words were, “Thank you.”
During the ceremony that took place on Sunday, Gladstone expressed her gratitude to Chief Standing Bear, the Osage Nation, Apple TV+, and her team. She went on to say that her victory is “for every little res kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented in our stories told by ourselves in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust from within from each other.”
Her conclusion was, “So thank you all so much,” she said.
It is the first time that Gladstone has ever been nominated for and won a Golden Globe. Scorsese, who also directed and co-wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, is the director of the film. She portrays the real-life Mollie Kyle, whose family and village in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma during the 1920s were the victim of serial homicides. This is in contrast to fellow Globe candidates Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Ernest Burkhart, and Robert De Niro, who plays William King Hale.
Not only did Gladstone make appearances in episodes of Billions and Reservation Dogs, but she also acted in the film The Unknown Country, which was released this year and for which she was awarded a Gotham Award.
An impressive number of dramatic females, including Gladstone, delivered outstanding performances in the year 2023. One of these ladies was Maestro’s Mulligan.
Best motion picture drama, Bradley Cooper’s directing and acting, and Mulligan’s portrayal as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein were all acknowledged by the Golden Globe nominators for their work in the film Maestro, which is a biopic about Leonard Bernstein and was directed, co-written, and starred Bradley Cooper. These nominations were presented by Netflix.
Saltburn, which was nominated for a Golden Globe and starring Barry Keoghan and Rosamund Pike, is another film in which the 38-year-old actor, who is also nominated for an Academy Award, appears. Mulligan has had a total of four nominations at the Golden Globes, after the nominations for “An Education” in 2010, “Promising Young Woman” in 2021, and “She Said” in the previous year.
Huller, who is a rookie to the Golden Globes, is originally from Germany, where she has been in films such as Toni Erdmann (2016) and Requiem (2006). In the French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, from director and co-writer Justine Triet, Huller, 45, portrays a lady who may or may not have killed her husband at their snowy chalet. The film was directed by Triet, who also provided the screenplay.
Huller was awarded the best actress prize by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association this year. The award was given in recognition of both the film Anatomy of a Fall and the Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer. In the latter film, she portrays Hedwig Hoss, the real-life wife of an Auschwitz concentration camp commander. Emma Stone, who is also a member of Poor Things, was tied for that prize with her.
Nyad earned Bening, who is 65 years old and the most distinguished contender in the category, her tenth nomination for a Golden Globe. Out of them, she was awarded the prize for best lead actress in a comedy or musical twice, first for the film Being Julia in 2005 and again for the film The Kids Are All Right in 2011.
The real-life tale of marathon swimmer Diana Nyad’s efforts to traverse the hazardous waters of the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to Florida is retold in the Netflix original film Nyad, which was directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. Jodie Foster, who was nominated for a Golden Globe in the supporting actress category in 2024, plays the role of Bonnie Stoll, Nyad’s coach, in this film.
The Morning Show actress, who is 40 years old, has received many nominations, including her first Golden Globe, which she received for her work on A24’s Past Lives. As a result of her emotionally devastating performance as South Korean expat Nora Moon, she was presented with a special prize from the Critics’ Choice Association in the month of December.
Celeline Song, who has been nominated for a Golden Globe for both her writing and directing, has made her debut in the feature film industry with the film Past Lives, which stars Teo Yoo and John Magaro. As well as receiving awards at the Gotham Awards, Spirit Awards, and other prestigious events, the film that received widespread critical praise was also honored with the Globes for the drama and non-English language motion picture honors.
Because of her outstanding portrayal as Priscilla Presley, Spaeny has been recognized with several nominations and has been awarded the Volpi Cup Award at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. This is the first time that the Golden Globes have honored her. Having earned a reputation for herself in the films On the Basis of Sex (2018) and Mare of Easttown (2021), she is the youngest candidate in this category due to the fact that she is just 25 years old.
With Jacob Elordi playing the role of Elvis Presley, the film Priscilla, which was produced by A24 and directed by Sofia Coppola and co-written by her, tells the story of how Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley met and eventually got married.
Barbie was the picture that received the most nominations at this year’s Golden Globes, with a total of nine. Oppenheimer came in second with eight nods, followed by Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things, all of which received seven nominations. When it comes to television, the last season of Succession received a total of nine nominations, followed by The Bear and Only Murders in the Building, all of which received five nominations.
