As she took to the stage to claim her second Bafta award of the night, Olivia Colman could scarely believe her luck.
Swearing and apologising in equal measure, the actress beamed with delight at the recognition she had finally received before celebrating in style, drinking until after 3am with her husband and close friends.
And it’s no wonder she was so overjoyed – only four years ago she was close to throwing in the towel altogether after the offers dried up and she found herself out of work for nearly half a year.
The accolades have been hard-earned.
Having decided she wanted to be an actress at the age of 16, Olivia was put off many times, training first as a secretary and then as a teacher, before finally making it onto an acting course.
Much of her early work consisted of adverts, including one for Danone Actimel yoghurt, another for The National Lottery and a voiceover for Andrex.
But by far the most memorable – even if you may not have recognised her until today – was the 2003 commercial for AA Car Loans in which she played two versions of a woman named Bev, one upmarket with a flash car (because she’d taken out a loan) and one downtrodden in a banger (because she hadn’t).
The script went: “Kev? Bev? Bev? Kev?” and was widely agreed to be one of the most irritating adverts ever made.
As a struggling actress she took on bit parts as well as adverts to earn a living but it was rarely easy and, in 2006, she agreed to do the low-budget Brit flick Confetti in which Colman and Robert Webb played a naturist couple who were getting married in the nude.
She has since described the film as “the worst experience of my life” and says she was betrayed by the film-makers who had lied about how much of her naked body would be seen in the final edit.
“I now know there are some people who are just bad,” she has said. They even started legal proceedings against the film-makers but abandoned them after deciding it was better to just pretend it had never happened.
It was a particular low-point for the actress but things were to get even worse before they got better.
After Olivia, now 39, gave birth to her first son, Hal, she suffered post-natal depression but explained recently. “I knew I loved my baby – I’ve always been able to see what I have in my life.”
She has had her moments of worry and despondency, emotions which seem scarcely conceivable considering her current success.
But just four years ago – in 2009 – the work had dried up to such an extent she was starting to look for a new career. “I had five months off,” she explained at the time. “Scary. I started to look up midwifery courses.”
Fast forward a few years, however, and Olivia couldn’t be more in demand, with work lined up for the whole of this year and next year already. She admits that the earlier struggles have made her accept almost every offer, because she needs to “make hay” while she can.
It is typical of a woman who has struggled to make it big since her teens.
Born Sarah Caroline Olivia Colman, she changed her name after trying to register with Equity and discovering that a Sarah Colman already existed. Luckily, that wasn’t a problem for her nearest and dearest. “To friends and family – including my parents – I’ve been Colly ever since I got the nickname at primary school,” she explains.
Brought up in Norfolk, her father was a chartered surveyor and her mother was a nurse. They sent her to an all-girls private school, where she first discovered the acting bug aged 16, playing Miss Jean Brodie.
“The first time I did a school play, was the first time I felt I was good at anything at all. I just loved it. I suddenly felt really at ease, and at home. Of course, at that age you keep it to yourself.”
Her parents, however, weren’t convinced and insisted she did a secretarial course – she is still rather proud of her ability to touch-type. School didn’t help and at one point she took a computer careers test. “It told me I’d make an ideal HGV lorry driver, because I’ve got 100% spatial awareness.”
But luckily she was encouraged by her godfather who told her that, as Brodie, she was “amazing, f***ing brilliant”.
Despite this, before hitting 20 she was persuaded to enrol on a teacher training course in Cambridge. Her heart wasn’t in it, “I would have been a terrible teacher,” she has since laughed.
She dropped out after attempting to join what she thought was a local amateur dramatics group, and discovering she’d actually auditioned for a Footlights production. Once involved she met Cambridge undergraduates David Mitchell and Robert Webb – the key to her early success.
“I owe Rob and David so much — they gave me my first job. I might not be doing this at all if it wasn’t for them. And they’re lovely friends.”
She also ran into her husband Ed Sinclair, which she says was like being struck by “a thunderbolt”. “He was gorgeous, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” she claims. “I stuck with him and made him realise he could only be happy with me. I still feel I’m punching above my weight.”
She knew instantly that they would get married. “I absolutely threw myself in – I didn’t play it cool. I had to work on him. I remember, about three months later, him saying: ‘What are you thinking?’ And I said: ‘I love you.’
“We married seven years later and we’ve been together 19 years. He’s the best person in the world.”
Always disparaging about her own looks, she claims that she “laughed him into bed” and says people still give them odd looks when they are out together because Ed, a writer who has just finished his first novel, is so tall and dashing.
Their relationship is so strong, that they recently agreed to leave this mortal coil together, after watching the film Amour. “We said if one of us is incapacitated 
when we’re old we’ll make a suicide pact.”
Ed had enrolled on a course at Bristol Old Vic and at first Olivia went with him and earned a crust by taking a job as a B&B cleaner. Later she enrolled too and found that she was quite good. In typically self-depracating style she says: “I do think it helped that I was so s*** at everything else.”
Her breakthrough role came in Channel 4’s Peep Show, in which she played Sophie Chapman, the love interest for Mitchell’s Mark. Since then she has appeared in a constant stream of comedy TV shows and films including Hot Fuzz, Black Books, Green Wing, Look Around You.
Later came Bafta-winners Rev, in which she starred opposite Tom Hollander and last year’s Twenty Twelve. But her real breakthrough to another level of fame came earlier this year, as her role as Ellie Miller in Broadchurch led to instant calls for her to win a Bafta in next year’s awards.
Some might say there is a danger she will now be over-exposed. Having just finished in Broadchurch, this weekend she starred in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. “You make things, and they’re delayed for ages, and then they all come out together,” she explains.
There’s no getting away from the fact that she works an awful lot. In 2012 she got just one break, in December. Now she’s looking at back-to-back projects.
At the moment she is filming a romantic drama for BBC1, alongside fellow Bafta-winner Sheridan Smith. Called The 7.39, she plays the wife of David Morrissey, who starts an affair with Sheridan’s character on a train.
Later there will be another series of Rev and also Bad Sugar, written by Sharon Horgan for Channel 4. Next year, almost certainly, she will be making the follow-up to Broadchurch.
She might be on top of the world not but it almost wasn’t to be as she nearly didn’t take the Broadchurch role, alongside David Tennant, after worrying how her sons Hal, now seven and five-year-old Finn, would cope without her.
Before filming commenced, she worried: “It’ll take four months, and I’ve never been away that long. I keep getting teary about the possibility of the boys waking up in the night and me not being there.”
Despite all the success and recognition now being heaped upon her, Olivia is unlikely to ever stop putting her family first. “I just couldn’t see the point without Ed or the kids,” she says. “I couldn’t do it without them.”
The family live perfectly normal lives with weekends spent walking the dog around their Peckham home and watching DVDs. Those who know her well, praise the actress’s down-to-earth attitude – she recently got all overcome after meeting Ant and Dec. “I’ve always loved them on I’m A Celebrity so I was sweating and blushing. But they’re lovely.”
And, like many people, she spends her spare time thinking about home improvements. “I dream of an open-plan kitchen with a huge table. Two years of saving and I’m still not there,” she said recently.
You can’t help thinking Olivia should treat herself now – she certainly deserves it.
Source: mirror.co.uk – Olivia Colman: being naked on screen was the worst then not getting work
