Smash hit

“We know Clooney is a major force behind this decision. He has been earbashing others who may have been willing to cross picket lines,” said one NBC executive, raging at the "disloyalty" of actors.

Sources close to Clooney have laughed at the image of “Red George” as a strike-organiser. “He does not earbash, he is far too easy-going for that,” said a business associate.

The strike already has brought production to a halt on all scripted prime-time TV series, and has derailed several high-profile film projects, leaving thousands of behind-the-camera workers at a loose end, in the worst employment dispute to hit Hollywood in two decades.

Negotiations to end the walkout collapsed last month, with the two sides deadlocked over how writers should be paid for work distributed over the Internet.

No new talks are scheduled and the strike has cast a growing shadow over Hollywood’s annual awards season, throwing even the fate of the Oscars, the film industry’s highest honours each winter, into doubt.

The striking writers last night scored a breakthrough when United Artists, the film production house part-owned by Tom Cruise, broke with parent studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc to reach a deal enabling the writers to return to work UA’s movies.

UA is the first Hollywood movie company to clinch an independent agreement with the WGA since the strike began on November 5. No details of the agreement were made public, but the union and the company said that the deal is “comprehensive” and “addresses the issues important to writers, including new media”.

The UA pact is similar to a recent agreement between the WGA and the production company owned by David Letterman, that allowed his late-night TV show and another one produced by his firm, Worldwide Pants, to return to the air with their writing teams intact.

Industry sources said that at least two other independent film companies, the Weinstein Co and Lionsgate Entertainment Co, were considering similar agreements with the WGA.

Three generations of British actresses, Julie Christie, Helena Bonham-Carter and Keira Knightley, are in the running for awards at the Golden Globes. Christie was nominated for her portrayal of a woman with Alzheimer’s in Away From Her, Knightley was singled out for the Second World War drama Atonement and Bonham-Carter for the adaptation of the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd.

The Golden Globes take place nine days before the nominations for the Oscars are announced, and are seen as a good indication of the likely decisions of the Academy Awards judges. Three of the four acting winners for the 2006 Oscars – Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson – had won at the Globes. Martin Scorsese also preceded his best director Oscar win for The Departed with the same prize at the Globes.

Atonement, the admired adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestselling novel, is in the running for seven awards, including the director, Joe Wright, and the writer, Christopher Hampton. Its three lead stars – Knightley, James McAvoy and the 13-year-old Irish actress Saoirse Ronan – were nominated for the story of lovers whose romance is shattered by a jealous younger sister.

Joining Knightley in the dramatic actress category is Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart, as the wife of the American journalist Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Pakistan, and Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth: The Golden Age. In the male category, George Clooney in Michael Clayton was nominated alongside Daniel Day-Lewis for his portrayal of an oil tycoon in There Will Be Blood, and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mobster in Eastern Promises.

Seven films are up for best picture: Atonement, American Gangster, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

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