Olivia Colman has revealed how she feels “threatened” by losing her anonymity and now lives “like a hermit” since starring in a string of high profile lead roles.
The Oscar-nominated actress admitted that she rarely ventures out and that she never expected the fame that has followed her.
Ms Colman, 44, has been nominated for the best actress prize at the Academy Awards for her portrayal of Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’period comedy drama The Favourite, and has already taken home a Golden Globe for the role.
Speaking with her former Broadchurch co-star David Tennant on his new podcast, she said that she “can’t cope” with people noticing her out in public.
“I have friends that I adore and I like going to safe places with them, my home or their home,” she said.
Fame was “very stupidly nothing I expected to happen, I just wanted to work,” she added.
Ms Colman said that it can feel “threatening” to lose her anonymity, although most people who approach her are “really nice”.
However, she said that she does not regret the attention, “because hand-in-hand with that, I’m getting work that I’m loving and always dreamt of.
“As long as I know I can keep my head down, stay at home, it’s not so bad.”
Ms Colman first became famous for her role as Sophie in Channel 4’s Peep Show, but has become better known for starring in ITV drama Broadchurch, BBC drama The Night Manager and films including Hot Fuzz, Tyrannosaur and The Iron Lady, in which she played Carol Thatcher opposite Meryl Streep.
The actress also told David Tennant that she once wrote to Wikipedia because her age had been listed to make her eight years older than she really was.
“Once, on Wikipedia, they had my birthday as the wrong day, the wrong month, and eight years before I was born,” she said.
“I emailed them, pretending it wasn’t me. (I wrote) ‘I was at school with her and that’s not her birthday’. I didn’t want them to think I was being so vain.
“I didn’t get a reply, and wrote again going ‘sorry guys, but I know it’s wrong’. And they didn’t reply.
“So I said, ‘actually, this is me, and it’s really upsetting me that you’ve made me eight years older than I actually am’.
“And they said, ‘we’d have to see a birth certificate to prove it’, and I went, ‘whose f****** birth certificate have you looked at in the first place to make me eight years older?”‘
Colman said that her date of birth was finally changed to the correct one, January 30, 1974, but joked that she should have said she was younger.
