The Golden Globes Awards managed to be both gay and British last night, with three homosexual-themed movies collecting gongs and two UK actors, Hugh Laurie and Rachel Weisz, winning their respective categories.

Brokeback Mountain, a controversial film about the forbidden love between two cowboys, was the overwhelming winner of the night, collecting awards for best dramatic picture, best director (Ang Lee), and best screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana).

The choice is unlikely to endear the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which hands out the awards, to the American heartland. The HFPA is comprised of about 90 journalists for non-American publications, although many members are part-time and write for relatively obscure media outlets. Membership of the HFPA is notoriously selective, with many large overseas publications, including The Times, excluded.

Other winners in films with a gay theme included Philip Seymour Hoffman (best dramatic actor), for his well-received portrayal of the homosexual writer Truman Capote in Capote; and Felicity Huffman (best dramatic actress), who starred in Transamerica as a man who undergoes a sex change operation.

Huffman was widely praised for her performance as a pre-operative male transsexual on a road trip with a bisexual prostitute who doesn't know he's her son. The actress, married to William H. Macy, is better known for playing Lynette in Desperate Housewives, which was last night named the best TV series, musical or comedy.

It was a relatively good night for British talent, in particular Hugh Laurie, 47, who managed to erase all traces of his English accent to play Gregory House, a misanthropic doctor, in the darkly humorous medical drama House, M.D.

The show became a huge critical and commercial hit last year, turning Mr Laurie into one of America’s best-known actors. Many Americans are surprised when they find out he is British.

Laurie won the Golden Globe for best actor in a TV drama, beating Kiefer Sutherland (24), Matthew Fox (Lost), Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) and Wentworth Miller (Prison Break).

"I made a list of all the people who deserve to be thanked. It came to 172 names," Laurie told the press on the red carpet outside the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the ceremony was held. "I wrote the names, put them in my left hand trouser pocket. I'm going to draw out three and thank them, the rest can lump it." In the end, Laurie thanked the show's script supervisor, hair stylist and his agent.

The other UK winner of the night was Rachel Weisz, 35, who collected the gong for best supporting dramatic actress The Constant Gardener, a Fernando Meirelles-directed thriller adapted from the bestselling novel by John le Carré. Her rivals included Scarlett Johansson (Match Point), Shirley MacLaine (In Her Shoes), Frances McDormand (North Country) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain). Weisz previously starred in About a Boy, alongside Hugh Grant.

Disappointment for the UK came when Polly Walker, 40, a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company who starred in the BBC/HBO joint venture Rome, lost the best actress in a TV drama award to Geena Davis, who played a female American president in Commander in Chief.

Davis, best known for her role in the road trip movie Thelma & Louise, said: "I want to let the Hollywood Foreign Press know I'm delighted. This is wonderful for a fledgling little show like ours. As I was coming in, I felt a tug at my skirt, and there was a little girl of eight or ten in her first party dress. She said, ‘Because of you I want to be president one day’.

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