Olivia Colman: ‘I never wanted fame. It’s the downside to a job I love’

This story is part of the March 10 edition of Sunday Life.See all 13 stories.

At the age of 16, future Oscar-winner Olivia Colman was enrolled at Norwich High School for Girls, in England’s picturesque East Anglia. The school’s motto? Do thy best and rejoice with those who do better. It was there that she took to the stage in her first role, schoolteacher Jean Brodie in a production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

In the play, Miss Brodie is a free-spirited, politically provocative teacher who instructs her pupils to meet the world with an open mind and to challenge convention but is also accused of promoting fascism.

“The thing is, I didn’t understand Jean Brodie when I was 16, I couldn’t have understood all the politics involved, and the nuances, and being a woman of the world,” Colman, now 50, tells Sunday Life.

“I don’t know if there’s a recording of it, but I bet I did a pretty awful job,” she adds, laughing.

Despite the intervening years, Colman adds, “I think I’m not too far different to that person. I have more to draw upon now, I suppose. I still feel things very deeply, as all humans do, but I’m able to access it, which is lucky and I could do that then as well. I don’t know how I’ve really changed over the years.”

Colman’s latest role, Edith Swan in Wicked Little Letters, is a wild departure from both the politically provocative world of Miss Jean Brodie and the rarefied world of Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, the role for which Colman is perhaps best known. Wicked Little Letters, directed by Thea Sharrock and set in 1920s England, is a wild romp through a little seaside town torn apart by a slew of obscene letters.

As the letters begin to fill letterboxes, the town is ripped open, accusations fly, and Edith’s neighbour Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) finds herself accused of the crime. PC Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) is not so certain that poor Rose is the one wot-dun-it, and sets out to uncover the truth. The most astonishing part of all of that? It’s based on a true event, the so-called “Littlehampton Letters”.

“I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it,” Colman says of the story, unearthed by screenwriter Jonny Sweet. “It was discussed [at the time] in Parliament and all the newspapers covered it. Everyone was gripped, the nation couldn’t believe what was before their eyes.”

“My mum said once, every generation thinks they invented sex. And it’s funny because we think, ‘Oh god, we’re awful now.’ I mean, that was trolling, but trolling now is on a world scale.”

OLIVIA COLMAN

It might be news to younger people in the 21st century, because we likely think we invented swearing, trolling and hate mail. “My mum said once, every generation thinks they invented sex,” Colman says, laughing. “And it’s funny because we think, ‘Oh god, we’re awful now.’ I mean, that was trolling, but trolling now is on a world scale.

“I wish we hadn’t got worse, but it is nice to know that people were doing that back then. And it’s amazing that this story has been hidden. But then, so much is hidden – women being flawed, fallible, foul-mouthed. We all know that women’s history is often not talked about, particularly if you are non-white. Your history has absolutely been told to make it palatable to the white nations over the years.

“History does get changed. The history of the Second World War is different if you learn about it in Sweden. In different countries, even around Europe, it’s all told slightly differently. Same with any story. You might remember a moment in your 20s where your friend was there and you’ll both talk about it and you’ll go, no, it wasn’t that, it was a Wednesday.”

Colman, whose career has catapulted her to the centre of the room, isn’t so sure about the thrills of fame. Credit: Alexi Lubomirski/AUGUST

On first encounter, Wicked Little Letters is a simple story about fame and scandal. But the more you dig into it, the more you realise it’s the story of how women inhabited the frameworks created for them. This is equally true whether it is Edith, the target of the letters, suffering silently under the heel of her father, or PC Gladys Moss, struggling to function as a female police officer in an era unaccustomed to such a thing.

“It’s repression, and if you try and keep something down, it’s going to come out,” Colman says. “I’ve likened it to wearing Spanx – the bit in the middle might look good, but it’s going to come out somewhere else. You get a fat armpit or a fat knee. The body can’t be repressed like that. And neither can you.

“Edith is in her late 40s and still living under the rule of her horrible, coercive, controlling, horrible father. And society is constantly looking at Rose, as they still do with women, saying you must look a certain way, behave a certain way.

“It’s still happening. The rape cases, 70 per cent of them don’t even get to trial. Women are still sort of shushed, or [told to] pipe down: ‘You’re all right, get on with it.’ It was shocking then. It’s still shocking now. And my God, why are we still fighting it 100 years on?”

At the heart of the film is a lot of bad language, some of which might even make a 21st century audience blush. Colman’s favourite can’t be printed here.

“I love a swear, I’ve grown up with swearing,” she says. “My very sweet mum, who worked for the National Health Service for 40 years, was an incredible nurse and a kind carer of fellow humans, and she swears like a docker. But it’s never in anger with her. It’s ‘Oh, f---, I’ve left the oven on.’ Or, ‘Should we have a cup of tea? Yeah, f--- it.’

“I’ve always had that language in my life and I’m still shocked if I hear someone swearing in proper anger. And sometimes, when you bang your head or drop something on your finger, saying f--- is a great release, especially if you do it through gritted teeth. It’s good. It’s cathartic. Like anger management.”

As the film’s mystery unravels itself, and Edith’s neighbour Rose finds herself on trial, Edith herself begins to derive great satisfaction from her fame and the perception the town has of her, as the victim of such a heinous crime.

Colman, whose career has catapulted her to the centre of the room, isn’t so sure about the thrills of fame. “When I started out with my career choice, I was very naive about it,” Colman says. “I never wanted fame. I wanted to work and I didn’t imagine fame would happen. I just thought I would have a jobbing actor’s life, doing various theatre where people come to see a play and afterwards they go, ‘That was great, thank you.’ And that’s all very nice.

“Once you go beyond the theatre, to telly or maybe film, more people know you and that’s the unfortunate downside to a job I love.”

Colman and her family, writer Ed Sinclair and the couple’s three children, moved out of London last year as the pressure of her high profile increased. “I can be outside [now] without anyone seeing me, some normality for my family, privacy,” she says.

Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown.Credit: Netflix

“When nice people ask politely, ‘May I have a photograph?’, that’s fine. And if I’m at a press thing, I’m in work mode. And fans at premieres and things are so polite, so lovely. That’s all a really nice experience. But when it becomes oppressive – it’s bullying, it’s horrible, you have no agency. So I would say to never crave fame, just try to be good at what you’ve chosen to do.”

And yet, fame still came knocking. Colman’s earliest work was in comedies such as People Like Us, Black Books, Peep Show, Green Wing, Beautiful People and Rev. Then came The Iron Lady, in which she played Carol Thatcher to Meryl Streep’s Maggie, and a television role, as DS Ellie Miller in Broadchurch, which persuaded American casting directors she could handle serious drama.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos cast her in his 2015 absurdist dystopian film The Lobster, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and in his 2018 comedy The Favourite. That role won her a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and an Oscar. And then, in 2019, she succeeded Claire Foy in the role of Queen Elizabeth II for the third and fourth seasons of The Crown, which brought her an Emmy, another Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild awards.

As an actor, Colman says, she is grateful for the audience’s acceptance of her transformation from one role to the next. “I think audiences are often underestimated,” Colman says. “For example, Claire Foy has incredible blue eyes and mine are very boring brown. Audiences just accept that this is one woman in three very different parts of her life.

“All humans, if we were to look at ourselves at age 15 or something, we might go, ‘I’m so different to that person now.’ And I will look at myself again when I’m 80 and think I’m different again. You experience so much in the interim. Audiences are able to accept three separate actresses playing three different parts of one person’s life.”

She’s also quick to give due credit to the hair and make-up department. When I ask Colman what she sees when she looks in the mirror, she says, “I think I always see myself. But what I love about an incredible hair and make-up department is that they do two-thirds of your job for you.

“I think there’s always so much of me in every role I play, but it helps me to have, for example, the 1920s hair. Or sometimes the horrible restrictive 1920s underwear helps you. So playing the Queen, having her clothes and hair – there’s only one woman in the world with that hairdo – really helped.

“It’s funny, the relationship you have with yourself in the mirror,” she says. “It’s always slightly disappointing to me when I see myself looking back and realise it’s still me. Maybe every actor feels like that. I don’t know.”

Wicked Little Letters is in cinemas March 21.

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