BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Michelle Williams has earned the Golden Globe for actress in a musical or comedy as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn,” 52 years after Monroe’s win for the same prize at the Globes.

The supporting-actor prize Sunday went to Christopher Plummer as an elderly widower who comes out as gay in the father-son drama “Beginners.”

Williams offered thanks for giving her the same award Monroe once won and joked that her young daughter put up with bedtime stories for six months spoken in Monroe’s voice.

“I consider myself a mother first and an actress second, so the person I most want to thank is my daughter, my little girl, whose bravery and exuberance is the example I take with me in my work and my life,” Williams said.

The black-and-white silent film “The Artist,” which led the Globes with six nominations, split its first two awards of the evening, winning the musical-score prize for composer Ludovic Bource but losing out on best screenplay for director-writer Michel Hazanavicius.

Woody Allen won the screenplay honor for his romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris,” the filmmaker’s biggest hit in decades. Never a fan of movie awards, Allen was a no-show at the Globes, where he previously won the screenplay honor for 1985’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo.

The wins boost Williams and Plummer’s prospects for slots at next month’s Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Jan. 24.

The Oscars are an honour for which Monroe herself never was nominated, though she was a two-time nominee at the Globes and won for best actress in a musical or comedy for 1959’s “Some Like It Hot.”

In “My Week with Marilyn,” Williams plays Monroe as an insecure performer struggling to establish herself as a genuine actress rather than a movie star sexpot just a couple of years before “Some Like It Hot.” The film chronicles Monroe’s contentious time shooting the 1957 romance “The Prince and the Showgirl” alongside exasperated director and co-star Laurence Olivier.

Like Monroe, Oscar consideration has been elusive for the 82-year-old Plummer, who has been nominated for Hollywood’s top honor only once in his 60-year career — two years ago, for the Leo Tolstoy drama “The Last Station.”

“I must praise my distinguished competitors, who whom I have the greatest admiration and to whom I apologise most profusely,” said Plummer, who added warm regards to “Beginners” star and Scottish actor Ewan McGregor. “I want to salute my partner, Ewan, that wily Scot, Ewan ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’ McGregor, that scene-stealing swine from the outer Hebrides.”

Plummer is regarded as one of the finest Shakespearean stage actors of the last half century.

The prize for best animated film went to Steven Spielberg’s action tale “The Adventures of Tintin,” a Paramount-Sony co-production that dealt the first Globes loss to Disney unit Pixar Animation.

Spielberg thanked his producing partner on the film, “The Lord of the Rings” creator Peter Jackson, along with both studios behind the film, based on what the director pointed out was a series of picture books by Belgian writer Herge that started 80 years ago.

Ricky Gervais, who has ruffled feathers at past shows with sharp wisecracks aimed at Hollywood’s elite and the Globes show itself, returned as host for the third-straight year. He started with some slams at the Globes as Hollywood’s second-biggest film ceremony, after the Oscars.

Gervais joked that the Globes “are just like the Oscars, but without all that esteem. The Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton. A bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker and more easily bought. Allegedly. Nothing’s been proved.”