“It’s pretty mind-blowing,” she said. “It feels incredible. There’s also another feeling that you are going to do more. I hope this is just the beginning.”

Awkwafina shifted course to play a young woman in a Chinese family that is keeping their matriarch’s cancer a secret from her in director Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. She said she particularly related to the film.

Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho: biting satirist goes to dark places

“Immigrants in this country who were raised to feel very American ... and when we go back where, you know, we’re told that you don’t belong here and you go back to where you belong,” she said.

”You feel like a stranger there and this constant feeling of being lost in translation. And I think that’s what really resonated with me in The Farewell.”

The win is part of a breakout two-year run for the 31-year-old actress who was born Nora Lum. She had a breakthrough year in 2018 after appearances in Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8.

She may now see an Academy Award nomination, though best actress winners in the Globes’ separate comedy category don’t always see Oscar nods.

Bong Joon-ho on Parasite, and getting his way with Weinstein

Awkwafina is the second woman of Asian descent to be nominated in the category in two years. Last year, her Crazy Rich Asians co-star Constance Wu was nominated for lead actress in a movie comedy/musical. (Olivia Colman won that year for her performance in The Favourite).

Sandra Oh had a historic win at the 2019 Golden Globes, taking home the award for lead actress in a TV drama for her work on Killing Eve, making her the first actor of Asian descent to win multiple Golden Globes (Oh was previously recognised in the TV supporting actress category for her work on Grey’s Anatomy).

Another to make history Sunday was Bong Joon-ho’s Korean class thriller Parasite, which won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film. It was the first South Korean movie to ever win that prize in the 77-year history of the awards.

Parasite is a parable of class, family and privilege, featuring a poor Korean family that insinuates itself into the lives of a wealthy family. The film debuted in October to ecstatic reviews, and on Sunday was named the year’s best film by the National Society of Film Critics.

The win boosts the Oscar odds for Parasite, which has the third-best shot at winning best picture, according to Gold Derby.

The Farewell’s Awkwafina: I’m not your typical movie star

Winning the top prize is always a challenge for foreign films – at the Globes they can’t even be nominated for best drama or comedy.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which handed out the Golden Globes Sunday in a ceremony in Beverly Hills, California, has historically awarded the foreign language prize to European films.

Parasite was distributed in the US by Neon. It has collected US$129.7 million in global ticket sales.

Associated Press, Tribune News Service and Bloomberg