Colin Farrell won big at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 5, taking home the trophy for best male actor in a limited or anthology series.
The award, Farrell’s third Golden Globe ever, was in in honor of his performance in The Penguin. The Max series saw Farrell reprise his role as the villainous Gotham gangster, which he first played in Matt Reeves’s 2022 film, The Batman.
For the part, Farrell underwent a massive physical transformation, spending three hours a day in makeup to turn into Oswald Cobblepot. ”
“No one to thank on this one. I did it all by myself,” Farrell joked when he took the stage. “Just a raw, paired away performance.”
He went on to thank makeup artist Michael Marino, who designed the Penguin’s look, as well as his “extraordinary” team. “All it took was three hours in the chair in the morning,” Farrell explained. “I drank black coffee, listened to ’80s music, and I became a canvas for that team’s brilliance.”
“I guess it’s prosthetics for here on out,” he teased.
Macall Polay/HBO
Farrell, 48, opened up to PEOPLE in September about becoming the Penguin.
“I had a bodysuit, so I was basically covered wrist to ankle. Only things that were me were my hands and feet,” he explained. “Everything else, including ears, were pieces. Everything was covered.”
The limited eight-episode series, which picks up after the events of Robert Pattinson-ledThe Batmanfollowed Oz as he tried to take on a new leadership role in the Gotham City underworld.
Elsewhere in his speech, Farrell thanked The Penguin‘s creative team, his costars, and even someone on the craft services team.
“Carolina on those cold winter nights in New York where I was the only one over-heating, she’d be there with a coconut water every half an hour. Carolina, God bless you. She kept the whole crew going.”
Ed Miller/Netflix
Other nominees on Sunday included Richard Gadd, Kevin Kline, Cooper Koch, Ewan McGregor and Andrew Scott. Each had an outstanding year themselves.
Gadd, 35, was nominated for his performance in Baby Reindeer.
In the hit Netflix series, the actor plays a version of himself — a bartender who ends up with a stalker named Martha (Jessica Gunning) — after he offers her a cup of tea while working at London pub.
The real-life Martha, Fiona Harvey, sued Netflix in June for $140 million, claiming the streaming service and Gadd made it easy for viewers to identify her and ruin her livelihood. Harvey, 48, found the portrayal of Martha to be defamatory and inaccurate. Still, the seven-episode series drew in enough viewers to make it Netflix’s 10th most watched English-language shows as of June.
“I think nobody thought that it would be the stratospheric, Emmy-nominated success that it became. And it was overnight,” Gadd told The Hollywood Reporter.
Apple TV+
Kline, 77, was nominated for his performance in Disclaimer.
Disclaimerbased on Renée Knight’s best-selling novel of the same name, followed acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), who “built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others,” per the official synopsis.
But when Catherine is sent a novel by an unknown author, “she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.”
As she tries to find out the writer’s true identity, she has to “confront her past before it destroys both her own life” and her relationships with both her husband, Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee).
Courtesy Of Netflix
Koch, 28, was nominated for his performance as Erik Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
The Ryan Murphy-led Netflix series brought one of the most notorious criminal cases of the 1990s back into the forefront. The series examined how and why Erik and Lyle Menendez (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) murdered their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloe Sevigny) — including the brothers’ in-court allegations that their parents were sexually and emotionally abusive.
Koch told PEOPLE that the nod was “a big moment” for the brothers, who were recommended by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón to receive a resentencing in October. “That’s what I’m most happy about, is that they get a big stage,” he said of the importance of the show being recognized, adding that he was eager to share the news with the Menendez brothers.
Koch also previously detailed his meeting with Erik, telling Deadline, “Preparing to play him was, in a way, preparing to meet him at the same time. Because in preparing to play him, I developed such a care and true — I just care so much for him.”
He added, “I believe him, I think he’s an amazing human being. And so, after playing him, getting to meet him was so rewarding and special and one of the most amazing experiences I think I’ll ever have in my life.”
Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME
McGregor, 53, was nominated for his performance in A Gentleman in Moscow.
In the Paramount+ series, McGregor plays Russian aristocrat Alexander Rostov, who avoids being put to death as he is placed on house arrest during the Bolshevik Revolution. He stars opposite wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays actress Anna Urbanova and Rostov’s love interest.
The series is based on the 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towle.
The actor previously opened up about using an intimacy coordinator for their sex scenes.
“It’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera,” he told Radio Timesper Variety. “If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer. It’s an important part of the work now, because it’s somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle.”
Netflix
Netflix’s Ripley, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, stars Scott, 48, as con-man Tom Ripley. The story had previously been told in the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon and Jude Law, and Scott wanted to put a new twist on the tale.
“People have a lot of preconceptions about Tom Ripley,” Scott told Netflix’s Tudum in July. “So it’s my job, I suppose in some ways, to ignore all that and try to create our own particular version of it.”
In addition to Scott, the series and his costar Dakota Fanning were also nominated for best limited series and actress in a supporting role respectively.
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