A triumphant night for Oppenheimer — one of the most highly-grossing films of 2023 — at Golden Globe Awards 2024. Not just the cast, but director Christopher Nolan also struck gold at the coveted award ceremony and bagged the trophy for Best Director Motion Picture.
Nolan was up against Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Greta Gerwig for Barbie, Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon and Celine Songs for Past Lives. For the unversed, at the box office, Oppenheimer received cut-throat competition from Greta's Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and most of the nominations at Golden Globes this year were also dominated by these two 2023 releases.
While accepting the honour at the Golden Globes 2024, Nolan remembered the late actor Heath Ledger who played Joker in his film The Dark Knight and said, "The only time I’ve ever been on this stage before was accepting one of these on behalf of our dear friend, Heath Ledger, and that was complicated and challenging for me and in the middle of speaking, I got stuck and Robert Downey Jr caught my eye and gave me a look of love and support, same look he's giving me now." He further expressed his gratitude for lead stars Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and the crew.
Speaking of Oppenheimer, it is a biographical thriller starring Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who is called the "father of the atomic bomb" and known for his role in the Manhattan Project—World War II. The film features Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife and Robert Downey Jr. as the United States Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss.