Olivia Colman

Olivia Colman

Sarah Caroline Sinclair, CBE, known as Olivia Colman, is an English actress. She has received many awards, including an Academy Award, three British Academy Television Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. She made her acting breakthrough in the Channel 4 comedy series Peep Show.

About Olivia Colman in brief

Summary Olivia ColmanSarah Caroline Sinclair, CBE, known as Olivia Colman, is an English actress. She has received many awards, including an Academy Award, three British Academy Television Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. Colman first came to prominence for her work in television. She made her acting breakthrough in the Channel 4 comedy series Peep Show. In 2019 and 2020, she portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix period drama programme The Crown, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series. She was a subject of the UK genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? in July 2018. Her fourth great-grandfather, Richard Campbell Bazett, had been born on the island of Saint Helena and that he worked in London for the East India Company. She is the voice of Minka, the Polish secretary in the Radio 4 comedy Hut 33, a fictional code-breaking hut of the real-life Bletchley Park World War II. She also provided the voice-over for Five’s poll for Britain’s Funniest Comedy Character. She decided to leave the programme after her agent suggested that she was too closely associated with her work and needed to widen her horizons. She joined the comedy duo That Mitchell and Webb Look in 2003 to play the role of Sophie in the comedy Peep show. She appeared alongside Mark Burdis as Kev, in a series of television adverts for the AA car insurance company Andrex.

In 2013, Colman was awarded a CBE for services to television and film for her roles in The Crown and The Favourite, as well as a BAFTA and an OBE for her role in The Iron Lady. In 2014, she won a BAFTAs for her performance in the ITV crime drama programme Broadchurch. For portraying Anne, Queen of Great Britain in The F favourite, she was awarded the Academy Award for best actress in a drama. She won the BAFTA for best supporting actress for the anthology crime programme Accused. In 2015, she appeared in the BBC2 comedy sketch show Bruiser, as part of the cast of The Office. Her first role was Jean Brodie in a school production of The Prime of MissJean Brodie at the age of 16. She cites her mother’s interrupted career as a ballet dancer as an inspiration to pursue acting professionally. She spent a term studying primary teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She met future co-stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb at Cambridge and met them in the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club. She starred in The Father, Tyrannosaur, The Lobster, and Murder on the Orient Express. Her radio ventures have included Concrete Cow, Think the Unthinkable, The House of Milton Jones and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.