Olivia Colman

Sarah Caroline Olivia Sinclair CBE (née Colman; 30 January 1974), known professionally as Olivia Colman, is an English actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four BIFA Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the BFI Fellowship Award.

A graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Colman made her breakthrough in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show (2003–2015). Her other comedy roles in television include Green Wing (2004–2006), That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006–2008), Beautiful People(2008–2009), Rev. (2010–2014), Flowers (2016–2018), and Fleabag (2016–2019). Colman received the British Academy Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for her part in the comedy programme Twenty Twelve (2011–2012) and Best Supporting Actress for the anthology crime programme Accused (2012).

Colman gained acclaim for her performance in the ITV crime drama series Broadchurch(2013–2017), which won her a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She also appeared in the Susanne Bier thriller miniseries The Night Manager (2016), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. In 2019 and 2020, she portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix period drama series The Crown, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.

Colman's film roles include; Hot Fuzz (2007), The Iron Lady (2011), Hyde Park on Hudson(2012), The Lobster (2015), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Tyrannosaur (2011), The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021), The Favourite (2018), and The Father (2020). For the latter two, Colman won the Academy Award for Best Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, respectively.



Early life and education
Sarah Caroline Colman was born in Norwich on 30 January 1974, the daughter of nurse Mary (née Leakey) and chartered surveyor Keith Colman. She was privately educated at Norwich High School for Girls and Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk. Her first role was Jean Brodie in a school production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the age of 16. She cites her mother's interrupted career as a ballet dancer as an inspiration to pursue acting professionally. Colman spent a term studying primary teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, from which she graduated in 1999. During her time at Cambridge, she auditioned for the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club and met future co-stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Colman was a subject of the UK genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? in July 2018. Although she expected that her family tree would mainly relate to Norfolk, it was discovered that 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. Bazett's son, Colman's third great-grandfather Charles Bazett, married Harriot Slessor. Researchers discovered that she was born in the Indian city of Kishanganj, lost her British father when she was aged three, and then made the journey to England alone. Slessor's passage was paid for by her paternal grandmother. The episode speculated that Slessor's mother might have been Indian, but did not present concrete proof; after the episode aired, the Berkshire Record Office published the will of Slessor's mother, which proved that her name was Seraphina Donclere, evidently of European origin, and that she had died in 1810.