Oscar race open after Globes draw

Hilary Swank and Leonardo DiCaprio, best actress and actor in a film drama.

If the Golden Globes were an opening game of the season, then the score would be two-all.

Four of the films predicted to feature heavily on Oscar night came away with two Globes each. The Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator won best film (drama) with star Leonardo DiCaprio winning best actor.

In the directing category The Aviator's Martin Scorsese lost to Clint Eastwood for his boxing flick Million Dollar Baby - the film's star Hilary Swank taking best film actress (drama) prize.

Swank thanked her sparring partners and boxers who trained her, as well as the women pugilists she battled in the movie. She said they made her "look like a champ".

The acclaimed star-free and modest road movie Sideways won the best film (comedy or musical) as well as the best screenplay prize. And the film of the play Closer won two acting prizes - Natalie Portman was awarded best supporting actress and Clive Owen best supporting actor.

The early awards for Closer put the show on a surprise track.

Closer, which is about two couples in a relentless game of relationship cheating, received only mixed reviews, and it had been considered to be something of an also-ran heading into the Golden Globes.

Owen was an underdog to Thomas Haden Church of Sideways and to Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby, and actresses Cate Blanchett in The Aviator and Virginia Madsen of Sideways were favoured over Portman.

When the stunned Portman, who portrays an American stripper living in London, took the stage to accept her award she thanked her family, co-stars and the director Mike Nichols.

"Being among all these candidates, I had no expectation of this," the actress, who is now a student at Harvard University, said.

Owen also thanked Nichols, as well as co-stars Portman, Julia Roberts and Jude Law.

"Any actor knows you're only as good as the scene you're in, so a huge part of this belongs to Jude, Julia and Natalie," he said.

The Golden Globes are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and often provide hints on which films might go on to win Oscars, the top film honours in the United States given in February by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

As well as recognising television in their extensive categories, the Globes differentiate in their film categories between dramas, musicals and comedies.

Jamie Foxx won the Golden Globe for best actor in a film (musical or comedy) for his role as Ray Charles in the film biography Ray.

Annette Bening won best actress in a film comedy for her role as a stage diva in Being Julia. Bening had been favoured to take the award.

She plays an actress in a mid-career lull who is threatened by a starlet and is romancing a younger man.

Onstage, Bening thanked he co-stars and her family, including husband Warren Beatty.

Asked what Julia would think about winning a Golden Globe, Bening told reporters the actress would have been unimpressed: "Julia doesn't think much of movie stars."

The Spanish film The Sea Inside, about a quadriplegic's legal battle to take his own life, was named the best foreign language film, and Nip/Tuck, about the lives of two plastic surgeons, took home the trophy for best US television drama.

Top television category awards went to Jason Bateman as best actor in a comedy show, while Britain's Ian McShane was best actor in a television drama.

Mariska Hargitay, daughter of the late actress Jayne Mansfield, was named best actress in a television drama for her role as a tough police investigator in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers - which had a cinematic release in New Zealand - was named best television mini-series or movie, and it earned Australian actor Geoffrey Rush the award for best actor in a television mini-series or movie.

The stars poured into the Beverly Hills Hilton hotel like commuters on a New York subway train - but much better dressed, thanks to designers such as Valentino and Prada.

It was all remarkably good-humoured, with Clint Eastwood walking past in sunglasses and tuxedo, and Leonardo DiCaprio stopping to sign autographs for fans.

The hotel manager upon whose heroism the film Hotel Rwanda was based, walked by almost unnoticed.

Robin Williams, who collected the Cecil B. DeMille award for career achievement, joked that he was glad to come to a show with an open bar, and he noted the stars in the audience.

"You know that when you have William Shatner, Prince, Puff Daddy and Mick Jagger on the same stage, that is a sign of the Apocalypse,"

- Staff reporter, Reuters