At the 1983 Golden Globe Awards, three very different actors all celebrated victories for unforgettable roles. But what they shared that night was a place in the annals of historic Globe wins.
Louis Gossett Jr. became the second Black man to win an acting Golden Globe when he won Best Supporting Actor for An Officer and a Gentleman. As drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, Gossett gave a forceful performance in the hit drama, as his character clashed with Zack Mayo (Richard Gere), a United States Navy Aviation Officer Candidate just beginning his training. Gossett returned a year later, as a Best Actor – Miniseries or TV Movie nominee for Sadat, and nine years later he won another Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe on the TV side for his work in The Josephine Baker Story, opposite Lynn Whitfield.
Ben Kingsley became the first actor to win both New Star of the Year and Best Actor – Drama for his feature film starring debut, Gandhi. The English theater actor admitted when he was first offered the role of the father of modern India, he thought it was “an impossible task.”
But he credited his Shakespearean training as not only giving him the tools to pull it off but also helping him remain grounded even after the role led to his royal title: Sir Ben Kingsley. “I am not frightened or running away,” he told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the time. “That experience of all those years of theater has given me the intellectual and physical stamina of a marathon runner, to keep the right things in their right place and to keep my craft at the center of my perspective and not on the periphery.”

Kingsley went on to earn six more Golden Globe nominations: Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1990, Best Actor – Miniseries or TV Movie); Bugsy (1992, Best Supporting Actor); Sexy Beast (2002, Best Supporting Actor); Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2002, Best Actor – Miniseries or TV Movie); House of Sand and Fog (2004, Best Actor – Drama); and Mrs. Harris (2007, Best Actor – Miniseries or TV Movie).
Alan Alda also set his own record that night, taking home his sixth and final Golden Globe as Best Actor – TV Series Musical or Comedy for his work in the hit series M*A*S*H — the most Globes ever awarded to one actor for the same role. For 11 seasons, Alda played Captain Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce, a role which earned him five previous Golden Globes: in 1975, 1976, 1980, 1981, and 1982.
It was a long way from his first 1969 Golden Globe nomination as New Star of the Year (for the film Paper Lion), but like later New Star winner Kingsley, Alda lived up to that prediction in spades, with notable film credits including Same Time, Next Year, California Suite, The Four Seasons, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, among many others. Alda would receive another Golden Globe nomination for the 1994 TV movie White Mile.