You heard what the big winner had to say when the collected their Golden Globes, but they had even more intriguing things on their minds when Hollywood.com caught them doing their victory laps backstage, including some comments outrageous enough to make even Borat blush.
America Ferrera on her moving and emotional acceptance speech:
“I don’t remember what I said. It was a very out-of-body experience. I was amazed to look out and see a room full of people that I had been so inspired by growing up and so admired. Truly, television and film was my inspiration in life when I was younger and knew that it was going to be a world that was going to give me the chance to do what I love to do in this life. And to be able to be up on that stage and to be welcomed by that community, couldn’t even put words to it. It was really wonderful.”
Helen Mirren on whether she’d heard from Queen Elizabeth about her performance (which Queen Elizabeth not being specified):
“Elizabeth I did communicate with me, and she said, ‘You’re the first one that got it right, Helen.’”
Sacha Baron Cohen on the acting sacrifices he made for Borat:
“The most unpleasant scene was certainly the naked fight. I didn’t know if I was going to survive. There was a little sign that I was going to show [director] Larry Charles, that if I ran out of air when Ken was sitting on my face, I will tap on the bed three times. If you look at the movie again, I tap on the bed three times, but Larry was so engaged with the monitor that he didn’t realize I was dying under Ken’s anus.”
Cohen’s co-star Ken Davitian on doing his bit to make it easier on the actor:
“He requested that I shower and shower and shower and powder and then shower again.”
Eddie Murphy on the prospect of reviving his singing career after the success of Dreamgirls:
“No, that’s dead. No ‘Party All The Time II.’ Not for me…”
Jennifer Hudson on learning she had real acting talent:
“Last year this time I wasn’t sure if I was an actress, but now this just gives me the confidence to want to carry on to continue acting, and I did find a new love in acting. And I want to continue acting and continue singing as well. I have that album in the music industry, and separate the two. But continue singing and try my hand in just acting. I just want to carry on with it and do it.”
Emily Blunt on when she learned Jennifer Hudson had real acting talent:
“I saw Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls and I knew I wasn’t going to win [in that category]. When I saw Jennifer, I told my friend, ‘Yeah, good luck next Monday.’”
Forest Whitaker on how a soon-to-be Golden Globe winner started his day:
“I woke up kind of late. I got up about 11:00 o’clock and then drank some coffee in bed and then thought about it for a minute or two, trying to think some positive thoughts. Got up and went down, and my wife was getting ready and stuff, and I was trying to be positive about that. Went and meditated for a while. Came back in, and they were ‘Where you been? Where you been?’ And I was just in the guest house getting ready, and I got dressed and came here.”
Beyonce Knowles on the Motown icon she looked to when creating her Dreamgirls character:
“Diana Ross was a huge inspiration. I had her posters all over, the movies she’s done and her music. I listened to them the whole time filming. It is not exactly Diana Ross. It is not based on her life, but she was absolutely my inspiration. And I saw her, and I was nervous because I wanted her to love it, and she was very, very sweet and full of grace and everything that I imagined her to be.”
Meryl Streep on whether her tyrannical The Devil Wears Prada character came home with her to her husband:
“I SO overcompensated at home, he was thrilled. Because I got all my nasty rocks off at work. I was – butter wouldn’t melt. ‘Can I do anything for you, darling?’”
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on Babel’s themes of complicated existence and interconnectedness:
You find good news and bad news. I think life is like that. It is sweet and sour. I don’t think it is everything is good or everything is bad. No, I think it is a mixed complex mosaic of emotions going on, and all these characters are basically connected spiritually by pain but never link physically. But it is how our life works every day. It is full of bad and great little moments. It is all day like that, and that is the complexity of the film. Scientifically, every breath we take affects one guy. And maybe now the breath we are breathing may be breathed by a tiger in Asia. This is reality.
Sacha Baron Cohen on the moment he finally stepped out of the Borat character for good:
“I woke up one morning, and I was quite hung over, and I accidentally shaved my mustache off, and I realized I had no alternative.”
Kyra Sedgwick on preparing what she would say if she won:
“I had this dog-eared speech that had lasted for three award shows. And as I left the hotel room, I left it, and I thought ‘Maybe that’s not a bad thing.’ I hope I remembered everyone. I didn’t remember any of my cast and crew, but they know I love them dearly.”
Helen Mirren on easing into the awards show circuit after a few years:
I have to say, it is great to be nominated a couple of times, and then you are not so intimidated by the whole thing anymore. Incredibly proud and excited, not intimidated. I think because I am not so scared anymore. Maybe you think it is an accident or a flash in the pan, and then the second time maybe you think the same thing. And then the third and fourth time you start thinking ‘Maybe I am doing my job right. Maybe it is okay.’”
Hugh Laurie on whether he was more blasé winning a second Golden Globe:
“It is sort of like your second parachute jump. You can’t be blasé about a second parachute jump and start lighting a cigarette on the way down. It is still a parachute jump and nerve wracking and exciting and thrilling. It is sort of undiminished. It was really a very exciting thing, still is.”
Bill Nighy on the consequences of having a name all-too-similar to Bill Nye the Science Guy:
“I’ve disappointed a lot of small children over the years. When my daughter first started school, they wanted to meet Bill Nye the science guy until they actually realized I was the other Bill Nighy. I have never actually met him. I don’t know if we resemble each other.”
Clint Eastwood on taking a break after making four high-profile films back-to-back:
“I have been trying to take a vacation since Mystic River, but then Million Dollar Baby came along, and then Steven [Spielberg] asked me to do Flags of Our Fathers, and I said “I got to do that.” Then while we were doing that, the idea came about to do Letters From Iwo Jima. So now I am going to sit back and relax, see if I can get that golf ball closer to the hole.”
Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes on the possibility of relaxing her “iron-fisted” no-press-on-the-set guidelines now that the show has won a Golden Globe:
“I don’t think I rule with an iron fist. I think I rule with a diamond fist. And it is not that we barely let anyone on. It is that we guard our secrets carefully so that our stories are surprising to the audience.”
Pixar’s John Lasseter on finding voice talent for his animated films by networking at awards shows:
“I met Tony Shalhoub for the first time on the red carpet of the Golden Globe a few years ago, and he’s a voice in Cars, and he’s becoming a very good friend of mine. I have been known to talk to a few actors on the red carpet of the Globes.”
Warren Beatty on the secret to maintaining a long-lasting marriage in Hollywood after many legendary years as a bachelor:
“Marry Annette Bening.”
Isaiah Washington on the truth behind the notorious on-set dust-up on Grey’s Anatomy between himself, Patrick Dempsey and T.R. Knight:
“No, I did not call T.R. a faggot. Never happened.”
Hugh Laurie, who plays a doctor on TV, on being asked for medical advice:
“It used to happen when I was a kid, because my dad was a doctor, and I used to answer the phone. And very often the patients would think I was him. I would give some medical advice. This is when I was about 12. It hasn’t happened since then.”
Salma Hayek on why she thought Ugly Betty had a chance to hit with American audiences:
“Why did we think it would work here? Because it is a fish out of water story. I know that works in the United States. It is a culture that is completely obsessed with the perception of an image, so absolutely it would work in the United States. But even more than that, I thought it was needed in the United States. But we wanted to make it a little bit different. We wanted to make it fun, but it was important for us that we talk about issues that matter. The original is a lot more farcical. We wanted to use this fantastic scenario to talk about issues that were controversial and real.”
Emily Blunt on what the Devil wears in Hollywood:
“I would say Ugg boots.”
Warren Beatty on his emotional response to watching the This Is Your Life-style clips when receiving a lifetime achievement award:
“The thing is that when you know you are on camera, you kind of suppress it. You know, our kids now that have these their whole lives because of the technology that we didn’t have then. So it is something we get used to. I am used to it. Jack, Clint, Dustin—they are used to it. Not a lot of people go back 45 years. Actually, Tom [Hanks] got his chronology a little wrong. I go back further because I didn’t do the play after The Most Promising Newcomer Award. It was before. So I go back to the ’50s. I am truly aging myseflf now.”
Clint Eastwood on being asked to stop and pose for a photograph:
“I don’t pose. What am I, Paris Hilton?”
Jamie Foxx on watching his co-stars win the big awards:
“I had a great time when it was my time, but it is their time now. And it is so great to be able to see them doing their things, and I’d like to see how they feel. Because I am over there with my pom-poms cheering.”
Alec Baldwin on the joys of his newfound career in comedy:
“Playing a guy who is running off to jump on a jet to have sex with Condoleezza Rice in Dubai is a new experience for me.”
Sacha Baron Cohen on the support of his girlfriend Isla Fisher while he’s deep in character:
“I do have to admire her. She ‘did’ Borat for ten months.”
Helen Mirren on her Globe win increasing her odds to take home an Oscar:
“The big O. I have never had a big O. They say the earth moves.”
Jennifer Hudson on the rare opportunity to get the last word with American Idol judge Simon Cowell:
“Like my award, Simon?”
