Amy Adams thanked Hollywood's "wonderful female role models" at the Golden Globes.

The 40-year-old actress - who scooped Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical for her role in 'Big Eyes' - used her acceptance speech at Sunday night's ceremony to express her gratitude towards those who set a good example to her four-year-old daughter Aviana, who she has with fiance Darren LeGallo.

She said: "I have so many wonderful female role models here tonight.

"It's just so wonderful that women today have such a strong voice and I have a four-and-a-half year old and I'm so grateful to have all the women in this room. You speak to her so loudly.

"She watches everything, and she sees everything and I'm just so, so grateful for all of you women in this room who have such a lovely, beautiful voice."

Adams wasn't the only star to celebrate female empowerment in her acceptance speech.

Maggie Gyllenhaal said she is "turned on" by strong females in TV and film as she hailed a "new wealth of roles" for women when she picked up the prize for Best Actress in a Mini-Series - which she won for her role in 'The Honourable Woman' - at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

She said: "I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately, and when I look around the room at the women who are in here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. Sometimes honourable, sometimes not.

"And what I think is new is the wealth or roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary, and it's what's turning me on."

And Julianne Moore recalled the difficulties in getting 'Still Alice' made as she accepted the prize for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for her turn in the movie.

She said: "When Lisa Genova wrote this book, she told me that no one wanted to make it into a movie because no one wanted to see a movie about a middle-aged woman.

"So I wanna thank the people who actually made the movie, James Brown and Lex Lutzus, Sony Classics and my good, good friends at Killer Films and this amazing cast, and our filmmakers, who, in the middle of their own crisis from a degenerate disease, ALS, decided they wanted to make movies."