Los Angeles  - The Golden Globes was an international affair Sunday night as Mumbai-based drama Slumdog Millionaire won a best screenplay prize, a drama about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon was named best foreign movie and Australian Heath Leger earned a posthumous award as best supporting actor.

Ledger's prize for his role as The Joker in the Batman drama The Dark Knight came almost a year after he died from an accidental drug overdose in New York last January.

The award for Ledger had been widely expected and cements his status as the hot favourite to win the the equivalent prize at the Oscars on February 22. He would become only the second ever person to win a posthumous Oscar.

"All of us who worked with Heath on The Dark Knight accept with an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride," said the film's director Chris Nolan. "After Heath passed, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema."

The acclaimed animated romance WALL-E was named best animated film, while little-known Sally Hawkins won the prize for best-actress prize in a musical or comedy for her role as a perky teacher in Happy-Go-Lucky. Also among the early winners were Kate Winslet, who won a best supporting actress prize for her role as a former Nazi in The Reader. Bruce Springsteen won the award for best movie song for his music in The Wrestler.

The success of Slumdog, which has received numerous critical awards, was all the more potent since it had originally struggled to find a distributor in the US. "We really weren't expecting to be here in America at all at one time, so it's just amazing to be here," said screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.

The Golden Globes, sometimes called Hollywood's biggest party, marked a stark contrast to last year's drab affair when a picket threat from the striking screenwriters union reduced the usually lavish affair to a functional press announcement.

From lifetime achievement award winner Steven Spielberg to Jennifer Lopez who opened the show in a shimmering gold dress, the Beverley Hills Hilton was filled with a roster of the biggest names in the movie and television world.

Coming into the show the leading nominations were Brad Pitt's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about a man born old who grows young and Frost/Nixon, about a series of revealing television interviews of the notorious US president, both of which were nominated for best drama. Doubt, starring Meryl Streep in a searing tale about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church also claimed five nods.

Other best drama nominees were The Reader, a WWII-based drama about a romance between a young law student and a female SS guard, and Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a drama about the challenges facing 1950's suburbanites.

The nominees for best musical or comedy were the Abba-based musical Mamma Mia!, Burn After Reading, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Mumbai-based Slumdog Millionaires was also hoping to pick up several awards.

The best foreign language nominees were Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany), Everlasting Moments (Sweden), Gomorrah (Italy), I've Loved You So Long (France), and Waltz With Bashir (Israel).

Presenters included the Jonas Brothers, Hayden Panettiere, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore, Sacha Baron Cohen, Salma Hayek, Jessica Lange, Amy Poehler and Seth Rogen, as well as Ricky Gervais, Johnny Depp, David Duchovny, Megan Fox, Eva Longoria, Sting, Sean Combs and Mark Wahlberg. (dpa)