76th Golden Globe Awards

When British stage, film and TV actress Olivia Colman won her first Golden Globe two years ago for the mini-series The Night Manager, she was conspicuously absent from the Beverly Hilton, because she had to be on another stage a continent away: “I couldn’t come because I was in a play in London and there is no such thing as getting two days off to fly to Hollywood!”, she laughs. Born in Norwich, Norfolk this married mother of three began her career in theater and only became a household name at an age where typical Hollywood actresses begin worrying about roles drying up in a still ageist industry.

As a child, Lin-Manuel Miranda could not finish watching the original Mary Poppins. Because as soon as he heard Julie Andrews sing the melancholic “Feed the Birds”, he would cry.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, more popularly known as Lady Gaga, was only three years old when she discovered her love for music. She played the piano, became good at it, and believes it is the thing that she is the greatest at.

Mahershala Ali, nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture Globe in 2016 for Moonlight, (for which he won at the Academy), has another shot at the Globe this year, albeit in a vastly different role. Ali could play any role with ease and conviction, transforming from a tough yet sensitive drug dealer in Moonlight to high-class artist.

One of the youngest thespians to win a Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy Globe, Emma Stone was only 28, when she earned the coveted award for Damien Chazelle’s romantic musical, La La Land, for which she also won the Academy Award. In The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos’ smart, vastly entertaining period piece, Stone plays Abigail, the penniless cousin of Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), who begins as a chambermaid but soon climbs to the upper echelons at the court of  Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).

If it weren’t for two fateful incidents, perhaps Constance Wu wouldn’t have starred in Crazy Rich Asians. First, Wu originally passed up the chance to play the blockbuster comedy’s female lead role, Rachel Chu.

Who would have ever thought that the guy in the box-office hit franchise, The Hangover, would turn out to be one of Hollywood’s critically-acclaimed filmmakers?Bradley Cooper, who portrayed Phil Wenneck, a teacher and leader of the Wolfpack, a group of guys who found themselves in trouble after a wild night in Las Vegas in The Hangover, is not only portraying the jaded hard-drinking country music singer-songwriter Jackson Maine, who falls in love with an upcoming nightclub singer Ally Maine (portrayed by Lady Gaga) in A Star is Born, but also directed, wrote and produced the musical romantic drama. A Star is Born, which marks the fourth remake of the original 1937 film, is Cooper’s directorial feature film debut.

One of the most accomplished and versatile actresses in Hollywood today, Amy Adams, who’s 44, has been nominated for nine Golden Globes, in both the lead and supporting categories and won two. Working at the peak of her abilities, this season she is a double Golden Globe nominee in two separate categories.

Since her feature film debut in 1995, Charlize Theron has demonstrated time and again her broad range in every role she takes. From the icy MI6 agent in Atomic Blonde to the grizzled war captain in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron has always sought out roles that show off her versatility and vulnerability.

Anger informs conflict, and of course, conflict drives narrative. But female expressions of sustained anger, as well as honest portrayals of the righteousness of moral indignation, are both heavily under-explored in cinema, for reasons likely both related to degree-of-difficulty and, it must be said, outmoded notions of what constitutes interesting parts for women or what audiences want to see.