Meet the rising Hollywood star who doesn’t do social media
Ready Player One actor Olivia Cooke has no Twitter or Instagram accounts but admits the lure is sometimes still too strong to resist.
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Olivia Cooke doesn’t do social media.
The star of new British period drama Vanity Fair, which starts on BBC First this week October 11, has done everything she can to stay away from social media — you won’t find an official Twitter, Facebook or Instagram profile anywhere (although you may stumble across some fakes ones).
It’s a concerted effort to stay away from the negativity that inhabits such places for users with a high profile, but the lure of the “murky pool” is sometimes too great to fight.
“When I’m feeling really shit about myself I sometimes just type my name into the Twitter machine,” she tells The Sunday Telegraph. “(But that’s) not very often because it’s so deadly. They’re horrendous — I don’t even have social media and it still lures me.”
Her opinion of the popular social platform isn’t particularly high.
“It’s a strange, murky pool where nothing ever really rises to the surface, you just have to sludge your way through it. It’s a really weird analogy but it feels like that. You just think ‘why am I here, why am I doing this?’ ”
Cooke, 24, grew up in in the northern English city of Manchester. With a few acting gigs under her belt she applied for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the country’s most prestigious acting school, but was knocked back.
It was a bit of a slap in the face, but it was a wake-up call Cooke needed and turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“It was really healthy for me to get that rejection and to know that I still had work to do,” she says, explaining she was getting a bit ahead of herself. “Also, if I’d gotten in I would have graduated three years ago so I wouldn’t have done half of the films and projects that I’m really proud of so I think it all happens for a reason.”
Cooke landed on the scene when she scored a lead role in the US horror-drama Bates Motel. She had already starred in a number of movies in the US, including Me And Earl and the Dying Girl, alongside Thomas Mann and Nick Offerman, and The Limehouse Golem with Douglas Booth and Bill Nighy.
Then at just 21, Cooke scored an opportunity some actors wait a lifetime for — a lead role under director Steven Spielberg in his big budget sci-fi thriller Ready Player One, which was eventually released earlier this year.
Cooke plays Art3mis — a player on the hunt for the Golden Easter Egg that has been left by the billionaire owner of OASIS, a virtual reality universe, who will hand over ownership to the player who finds it first.
Securing the role was a dream come true for the young actor.
“When I found out that I got that role I was 21 and I was like ‘wow, this is it now, I’ve had a good run ... I’ve peaked.,” she laughs.
But working for Spielberg was also a lot to take on board. What surprised her — and ultimately eased the tension she was feeling — was that the Indiana Jones and The Post director, despite years of box office and artistic success, still had nerves on set as well.
“It was really intimidating and nerve-racking but he’s also full of anxieties and nerves and so that makes you feel a lot better and you think ‘oh God, thank God he’s human’,” Cooke says.
“But he’s completely awe-inspiring. Every day you’re working with Steven Spielberg, one of the most well-known and revered directors on Earth. It was amazing.”
Her latest project to hit the screen sees her stepping back in time, rather than ahead, as she dons a bonnet to play William Makepeace Thackeray’s heroine Becky Sharp in the latest iteration of Vanity Fair.
Cooke hadn’t seen the other Beckys — who have included Myrna Loy in the 1932 film and Reese Witherspoon in 2004 — when she took on the role (she has since).
The fact that Thackeray’s book was so long and sprawling (it was published as a 19-volume monthly serial over two years before becoming a book) means the re-telling is open to different interpretations, Cooke says. With this particular adaptation, she was drawn in by Gwyneth Hughes’ writing.
“You know it’s a drama and it’s very historical but I also find it so funny,” she says. “I think Gwyneth’s writing is really biting and quite flamboyant and tongue-in-cheek and I really loved that fruitiness.”
Director James Strong recently wrote that he “wanted to make a period drama, for people — like me — who don’t normally like period drama.”
Unlike Strong, Cooke does like a good period drama, but she understands what the Doctor Who and Broadchurch director was getting at.
“I love period dramas but I do find them to hold the audience at arm’s length a little bit and you’re being told a story rather than being invite in,” she says. “So I do think with the style and the looks to camera you are, as an audience, being invited to share Becky’s secrets which is quite a lovely way of storytelling.”
Vanity Fair is on BBC First from October 11