Helen Mirren was installed yesterday as the hottest favourite in any major category for this year’s Oscars after a night of unprecedented British success at the Golden Globe Awards.

Dame Helen won a pair of Best Actress awards for her portrayals of two British queens: Elizabeth I in the Channel 4 television drama of the same name and Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears’ film The Queen.

Britons won nine of the 25 awards available at the ceremony in Beverly Hills, regarded as a reliable form guide for the Academy Awards next month.Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Swank and Charlize Theron, the previous three winners of the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama, all went on to claim the Best Actress Oscar.

Accepting the award, Dame Helen paid tribute to her sovereign. She said: “In 1952 a woman called Elizabeth Windsor, at the age of 25, walked into literally the role of a lifetime and I honestly feel this award belongs to her, because I think you fell in love with her, not with me. I just tried to make her as truthful to herself as possible.

“However, she already has an orb, that goes with her sceptre. So I will gratefully receive this one.”

Dame Helen, the granddaughter of a Russian aristocrat exiled in Britain after the 1917 Revolution, has been nominated for an Oscar twice without success: in 1995 for The Madness of King George and for Gosford Park in 2002. Last night William Hill cut the odds on her winning this year’s award to 2-9.

The Queen missed out on the Best Film award, but Peter Morgan, the prolific writer behind the theatrical hit Frost/Nixon and the recently released film adaptation of Giles Foden’s novel The Last King of Scotland, won a Golden Globe for his screenplay. He was rather less generous than Dame Helen about the film’s central character, explaining that he had been inspired to write his fictionalised account of life in the Royal household in the days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

He explained: “In 1997, 2.2 million people went on the streets of London, sleeping rough, bringing the biggest city in Europe to a standstill, so that a stubborn 70-year-old lady would fly from Aberdeen to London.”

Other British winners included Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt, for Stephen Poliakoff’s BBC drama Gideon’s Daughter, and Jeremy Irons, who took the Best Supporting Actor honours for his portrayal of the Earl of Leicester opposite Dame Helen’s Virgin Queen. Elizabeth I was also voted the best television film or mini-series.

Hugh Laurie won the award for Best Actor in a Television Drama for the second year running for his cantankerous doctor in House and Sacha Baron Cohen continued his climb from late-night television comedy to Hollywood stardom when he received the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. Referring to the various legal claims against his hit film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the North London comic thanked “every American alive who has not sued me so far”.

Unlike the Oscars, which are voted for by the almost 6,000- strong Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Golden Globes are decided by the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who number about 80. Their timing — after the Oscar nomination ballots are returned but before they are announced — have historically made them a fertile source of predictions for Oscar glory.

The British successes were a welcome fillip for an industry that is currently basking in an unusual number of commercial and critical successes but was also hit hard last year by tough new tax legislation.

John Woodward, the chief executive of the UK Film Council said: “We’re back in business.”

However, some industry observers queried whether the Golden Globes successes proved that British film-making was in healthy shape overall. Geoffrey McNab, a contributing editor to Sight and Sound magazine, said: “There is a layer of independent producers at the coalface who are finding things harder than ever.”