Golden Globes 2026: Rose Byrne, Timothee Chalamet and One Battle After Another in the hunt for Oscars glory

Sometimes Australians can be accused of parochialism. We’re a small country, roughly a third of the population of the UK and fewer than a 10th of the US.

So, as much as we like to boast about “punching above our weight”, we do have a tendency to be really chuffed when those bigger English-speaking countries notice us. Call it a cultural inferiority complex, call it a hangover from the colonial days. It’s there.

When Australian stars do well on the international stage, we’re particularly pleased, and want to bathe in that reflected glory. So, understandably, we get really excited when Australians are nominated for big awards, even more so when they win.

But let’s make one thing clear. The genuine excitement of Rose Byrne winning the Golden Globe for her performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not a parochial response. It’s not influenced by her being a child of Sydney suburb Balmain who first broke through in local productions such as Two Hands and has now “come good”.

It’s that Byrne is well beyond deserving, regardless of any national affiliation.

Her performance in Mary Bronstein’s darkly comedic but properly stressful film about an under-pressure mother in the middle of a mental breakdown is one of the most powerful and magnetic of the year. It punches in every scene.

She captured the panic response of having the worst day of your life in a way that was equal parts deeply empathetic and kind-of repellent. It’s the conflict between those two responses that makes this performance – and the film – so special.

There was a specificity to that character that is so distinct, but a universality that, if you don’t have a chronically ill child, a ceiling that caved in, a hostile therapist and a missing patient, you still feel a connection to that character.

We all know what it’s like to have everything go wrong all at once. The pile-on is real.

Byrne has an incredible range that can take on the grimmest dramas (Damages) and the goofiest comedies (Bad Neighbours, Spy), and everything in between and sometimes both at the same time. In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, she found a role that has finally gained the notice she has long deserved.

She now puts herself in serious contention for an Oscar.

The Golden Globes are a weird awards show. It’s long been controversial, and often wasn’t respected and went through something of a reckoning a handful of years ago when it was revealed that among the oddball group of voters, 90-or-so LA-based foreign so-called journalist, there wasn’t a single Black person.

It was sold, old members were purged, new ones invited to join the list of deciders (mostly international critics), but is still plagued by questions over its conflicts of interest — the Globes are now owned by the same parent company as the major Hollywood trade publications in a textbook display of corporate vertical integration.

Regardless, the value of the Golden Globes has always been a marketing exercise. Win a Globe, give a good speech with millions of people watching, but especially those 10,000 Academy voters and give yourself a massive boost at being nominated for — and winning — an Oscar.

Byrne is now in that hot seat.

The voting period for Oscars nominations open tomorrow (the timing is not a coincidence) and the 1300 actors, the largest contingent in the Academy, who will decide on the acting nominations, were paying attention.

Those that didn’t already now know that Byrne gives a disarming and charming, roguishly Australian acceptance speech – she talked about her parents buying a subscription to the streaming service that had the rights to the Globes, and about husband Bobby Cannavale not being in the room because he was at a reptile expo helping their kids buy a bearded dragon.

More importantly, if they haven’t already watched If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, they now will. It’s on their radar more so than ever.

Her stiffest competition is Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley, who also won a Globe tonight thanks to the quirk where at this ceremony, the comedy and drama films are in separate categories. Buckley too, was a delightful on-stage presence, and also very Irish, which can only be endearing.

Buckley has been the presumptive favourite for her wrenching performance in Hamnet, where she also plays a mother going through some heavy stuff, but Byrne’s victory makes this a real race.

Anyone with a passing interest in the awards seasons knows that when there’s one dominant filming winning everything, it gets boring fast. If you were scripting that movie, you’d write twists, turns and conflict.

So, what do we know about the Oscars race now that the Globes are done?

One Battle After Another is in pole position, having picked up the comedy movie Globe, as well as a pair of wins for writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson, while supporting actress Teyana Taylor also emerged victorious.

The film is an incredible cinematic feat, excelling in film craft, from its thundering score, its editing, its pacy script, its consistent tone, and even its stealthier performances such as that from Benicio del Toro.

It also could be read as a political polemic about racism, would-be fascists and former revolutionaries. The opening shot is of an immigration detention centre on the US-Mexico border while there’s also a scene which features government agents deliberately stirring violence among protestors.

That’s a potent analogy to the political situation in the US, and the killing of unarmed protestor Renee Good by Donald Trump’s immigration force.

At the same time, if you don’t want politics in your movies, One Battle After Another also works beautifully as a piece of pure entertainment, a pulsating thriller with a momentum that never lets up.

Hamnet taking out the drama film keeps it alive in the Oscar race, and its director and co-writer Chloe Zhao, a previous Oscar winner for Nomadland, is all but guaranteed a spot on that directing nominations list.

Sinners was seen as strong competition but the Ryan Coogler vampire horror movie underperformed, winning the original score and the not-serious, consolation category of cinematic and box office achievement.

But Sinners will play better among the Academy’s still largely American voting body than the Globe’s international critics. Don’t count it out just yet.

Marty Supreme is also in the hunt, and Timothee Chalamet looks set for at least an Oscar nomination if not the win for his intense, committed performance as a 1950s hustling ping pong champion. At 30 years and two months old at the time of the ceremony, he’ll be the second youngest ever person to win the best actor Oscar if he does.

There’s still a spoiler though. In the drama category, Wagner Moura, known for starring in TV series Narcos, won for his role in Brazilian film The Secret Agent. But he didn’t nab a Screen Actors Guild nomination, and just like his compatriot last year, Fernanda Torres, could ultimately be a Golden Globes winner who then misses out on Oscars night.

Another critical favourite this season is Sentimental Values, a Norwegian family drama that has been in the mix since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

There was a surprise last week when Stellan Skarsgard, the veteran Swedish actor who has been in so many Hollywood productions and birthed a brood of thespians who are also big stars, lost to Australian Jacob Elordi at the Critics Choice Awards. That’s been righted now, with Skarsgard winning the Globe.

He didn’t pick up a SAG nomination, but that shouldn’t stop him from winning at the Oscars, which has a more select group of voters, many of whom have worked with Skarsgard over the decades.

The one movie that is surely an Oscars lock will be KPop Demon Hunters, the cultural phenomenon that seems be Netflix-proof – in the sense that despite it never getting a proper cinema release, it’s so undeniable it doesn’t get tagged with the same “Netflix doesn’t believe in cinema” cloud as the streamer’s other films sometimes do.

It won a pair of Globes, including original song for chart-topper Golden and for best animated film. Look for it to repeat at the Oscars.

On the TV side, Adolescence continued its winning streak, picking up four awards including for best limited series and for its actors Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty. They would have teeming trophy cabinets given its total dominance all year, but the Globes is the last stop on their circuit.

The Globes similarly followed the Emmys’ picks in the TV drama and comedy categories, crowning The Pitt and The Studio respectively, two shows that were new to the 2025 slate. The Pitt’s Noah Wyle and The Studio’s Seth Rogen also won their races.

What was different was Rhea Seehorn won for drama actress for Pluribus, which is such a new show, it only wrapped in December, and wasn’t Emmys eligible last year. She is the one to beat for next year’s ceremony.

In the new Globes category of best podcast, it awarded the gong to Amy Poehler, an actor and former ceremony host who’s a stalwart of this off-kilter but influential awards show.

The other nominated Australians were Joel Edgerton, Nick Cave, Sarah Snook and Jacob Elordi.