BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – “Babel” won best drama and “Dreamgirls” was named best musical or comedy at Monday’s Golden Globes, establishing them as potential front-runners for the Academy Awards.

“I swear I have my papers in order, governor, I swear,” “Babel” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu joked after Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presented the best drama prize.

The Globes for best dramatic performances were awarded for renditions of two wildly different heads of state: Helen Mirren won best actress as Britain’s monarch Elizabeth II in “The Queen,” while Forest Whitaker took best actor as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.”

Mirren noted that at age 25 in 1952, Elizabeth “walked into literally the role of a lifetime, and I honestly think this award belongs to her, because I think you fell in love with her, not with me.”

Mirren also won the Globe for best actress in a TV movie or miniseries as the current monarch’s namesake of centuries ago in “Elizabeth I.”

The musical “Dreamgirls” won acting honors for Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson.

“Wow. I’ll be damned,” said Murphy, who plays a slick soul singer struggling to change with the times and find new relevance as the Motown music scene evolves through the 1960s and ’70s.

Hudson rose to fame two years ago on “American Idol” on the strength of her powerhouse voice, which she uses to great effect in “Dreamgirls.”

“I had always dreamed but I never ever dreamed this big. This goes far beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” said Hudson, who dedicated her award to the late Florence Ballard, one of the singers from the Supremes on whom her “Dreamgirls” character was based.

Sacha Baron Cohen received the Globe for best actor in a movie musical or comedy for his satire “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

Meryl Streep won her sixth Golden Globe, this one as best actress in a musical or comedy for “The Devil Wears Prada,” where she plays the boss from hell at a fashion magazine.

The best director prize went to Martin Scorsese for the mob tale “The Departed,” the second Globe for the filmmaker.

American director Clint Eastwood’s Japanese-language World War II saga “Letters From Iwo Jima” won the honor for foreign-language film, a prize usually reserved for movies from outside the United States.

The talking-auto comedy “Cars” took the first-ever Golden Globe for animated film, a category added because of the many cartoon flicks Hollywood now churns out..

“The Queen” won the movie screenplay honor for Peter Morgan.

Warren Beatty received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.

“The truth is I haven’t made an awful lot of movies, in fact,” Beatty said, joking about the busy schedules of other older actors and filmmakers such as Eastwood and Jack Nicholson. “Something like this is enough really for a guy to go out and make another movie.”

As Hollywood’s second-biggest film honors, the Globes are something of a dress rehearsal for the Oscars, whose nominations come out Jan. 23. The Oscar ceremony will be on Feb. 25.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association that presents the Globes has roughly 85 members, while about 5,800 film professionals can vote for the Oscars.

Yet the group has a strong history of forecasting eventual Academy Awards winners and providing momentum for certain movies and stars as Oscar voters begin to cast their ballots.Nominations for the Oscars closed Saturday, so the outcome of the Globes cannot affect who gets nominated.