The tragic romance “Atonement” was named best drama yesterday at a Golden Globes event that was deflated from star-studded revelry to dry, news conference-style awards announcement because of the Hollywood writers strike.

The bloody stage adaptation “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” was chosen as best musical or comedy. Its star, Johnny Depp, won for best actor in a musical or comedy for the title role, playing a vengeful barber who slits the throats of his customers in the adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s stage musical. “Atonement,” which led Globe contenders with seven nominations, stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. The period drama traces the consequences following a jealous teen’s false criminal accusation against her sister’s lover. Daniel-Day Lewis was named best dramatic actor for the historical epic “There Will Be Blood,” in which he plays a baron of California’s oil boom in the early 20th century whose commercial interests put him at odds with a young preacher.

Julie Christie was named best dramatic actress for the gloomy drama “Away From Her,” starring as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s who forms a new attachment to a fellow patient that causes heartache for her husband.

Cate Blanchett won the first award of the night, taking the supporting actress Globe for the Bob Dylan tale “I’m Not There.” And like Ms. Blanchett, who took the honor for the gender-bending role as one of six actors playing incarnations of Dylan, no other winners were there, either.

Actors and filmmakers skipped the Golden Globes because of the two-month-old strike by the Writers Guild of America, which had planned pickets outside the show. Globe planners and NBC canceled the three-hour star-studded bash in favor of an hour-long news conference at which clips of film and TV nominees were shown and reporters from entertainment news shows announced winners.

Marion Cotillard won for best actress in a musical or comedy for a remarkable personification of singer Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose.”

Javier Bardem won for supporting actor in “No Country for Old Men,” playing a merciless killer tracking a fortune in crime cash poached by an innocent bystander who stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad. “No Country for Old Men” also won the screenplay prize for writer-directors Ethan and Joel Coen.

The rodent tale “Ratatouille” — directed by the Brad Bird, who made Academy Award winner “The Incredibles” — was named best animated film.

Among TV recipients, Jeremy Piven won for his supporting role as an acerbic agent in HBO’s “Entourage.” Samantha Morton won supporting actress for “Longford.” Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder won the prize for best original song in a movie for “Guaranteed,” featured in director Sean Penn’s road drama “Into the Wild.”

“Rest assured that next year, the Golden Globe awards will be back bigger and better than ever,” the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that hands out the Globes, Jorge Camara, said at the close of the news conference, which had been announced as an hour-long event but lasted just 30 minutes.