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I suspect Olivia Colman is secretly quite relieved that awards season is over. Not because she doesn’t want to keep adding prizes to her mantlepiece, of course she wants to do that. But more because it will mean that, for a few months at least, she might not have to do another publicity appearance.

Colman has never been a star who pretends that she loves red carpets. She has until now, with all this global attention for her role as Queen Anne in The Favourite, been a rooted British television star, a national, not international, treasure. She had never partaken in the glossy, pompous American red carpet circuit before, and if ever she did pick up a gong at, say, the BAFTAs for Broadchurch, she usually wore black. The first time she won a Golden Globe, back in 2017 for The Night Manager, she famously skipped the ceremony, and only found out that she had won the next day, when she switched on her phone after going to bed at a sensible 10pm.

It is perhaps self-deprecation, rather than irreverence, that has prevented Colman from finding her inner ‘red carpet star’ in the past. Following that Golden Globes miss, she told the BBC, “I looked at the list and thought ‘I won’t win in that group’”, and later regretted missing out.

Before promotional duties for The Favourite began, she hired the former Vogue stylist Mary Fellowes- and a visible confidence has appeared. Fellowes has dressed Colman in well-cut, subtly glamorous pieces by Stella McCartney, Emilia Wickstead and Roksanda on the tour so far, yet Colman keeps her feet on the ground, having the fittings at home in her lounge with her tea and her dogs, rather than in some fancy atelier.

She’s taught her to make subliminal points about her personal values via her clothing. All of those brands are helmed by working mothers or are family-owned. Sometimes the duo choose to highlight labels with strong sustainability principles, other times it’s about giving a platform to a new affordable brand, like London start-up The Fold. If her dress is classic, she’s wearing an eye-catching accessory.

“Olivia is a strong woman, a working mother and an independent thinker,” Fellowes said recently. “All I’ve ever sought to do with her clothing is to make her feel empowered and like herself.”

A publicist recently told me that her client, a male designer helming a British label, wasn’t interested in dressing Colman because he couldn’t be bothered to make a custom dress for her that wasn’t sample size. His loss. Colman, I think, is one of the most relatable-looking women on the red carpet this year, and in a world where fashion ‘influencers’ (real women blogging about how they dress their real bodies on Instagram) have become one of the most powerful advertisers for clothing, I’d say that Colman’s look is more relevant and desirable than any other celebrity in attendance at the Oscars.

Getting dressed up, in most circumstances, is a bit of fun, but when you’re a nominee navigating a promotional tour it becomes a chess game. Looking good is currency in Hollywood and the parade becomes an exercise in personal brand positioning.

Are you considered ‘stylish’? If the answer to that question is yes, then all sorts of lucrative opportunities, namely big fashion and beauty contracts, can come your way. After a successful run of glamorous appearances in dresses by Calvin Klein, Givenchy and Gucci during last year’s awards season, Margot Robbie was awarded a Chanel ambassadorship, meaning that she will star in advertising campaigns for the Parisian house. The trajectory for the former Neighboursactress was entirely strategised by her stylist, Kate Young, and announcing the ambassadorship whilst wearing Chanel to the 2018 Oscars was almost as big of a prize as if she’d actually won the gold statue.

Colman, I suspect, doesn’t care about all of that. But now she is in a position where she could pursue these deals if she fancies it. Her sleek, considered style has been honed by her stylist, sure, but the personality and relatability that she brings is all her own and it’s what rare. She is, by all accounts, the new Fashion Favourite. Whether she actually wanted to be, or not.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk – How Olivia Colman became the red carpet’s most relatable style star

Rarely has the title of a film ­described its star so well as The Favourite and Olivia Colman.

Her stellar performance as the frail and unpredictable Queen Anne has ­won the hugely versatile actress even more fans.

And the pitch-perfect portrayal of the 18th century monarch has already netted Olivia her second Golden Globe.

Tonight the lavish, comical period drama may land the star her fourth Bafta.

But the icing on the cake could come in a fortnight if she wins the best actress Oscar for the regal role.

And next month the star joins the ranks of Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench when she is presented with a fellowship of the BFI.

With national treasure status beckoning and all those awards, many actors would be full of themselves.

But Olivia, 45, is not many actors.

She wears her well-earned fame with the same kind, warm humility that has ­characterised her amazing career.

Friends of the star, who first pinged the nation’s radar in the 2003 cult sitcom Peep Show, say she is unchanged by fame.

Actor and writer Jonathan Dryden Taylor, who met her in 1994, said: “She’s the same person now as she was back then, the warmest, most delightful human being.

“I don’t think you can find anyone in the industry with a bad word about her.”

He recalled Olivia, nicknamed Collie, taking him to one side and thanking him for the jokes he penned for her in That Michell and Webb Sound sketch show.

Jonathan said: “It’s a measure of what kind of a person she is.

“She thanked me for writing her jokes even though she was the actual star.”

He also remembered a story she told him about filming Broadchurch, for which she won 2014’s best leading actress Bafta.

The plot pitted her character, cop Ellie Miller, against Jodie Whittaker’s in some really intense and angry scenes.

Taylor said: “Collie told me the moment ‘cut’ was called they fell into each other’s arms and hugged because they couldn’t bear being horrible to one another. That epitomises everything about her.”

Hardworking and modest Olivia wanted to perform from the age of 16. She said: “Being able to put ‘Actor’ on my passport was all I wanted in the world.”

The daughter of a nurse and a chartered surveyor, Norwich-born Olivia – real name Sarah – caught the acting bug after landing the lead part in a school play ­having auditioned on a whim.

But ­instead of ­drama school, she began a teacher ­training course at Homerton college in Cambridge, where she joined the university’s legendary drama society – Footlights.

There she met her future husband Ed Sinclair, with whom she has three children.

She also met fellow students David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who she would work with for many years, most memorably for 12 years from 2003 on Peep Show.

Her on/off relationship as Sophie with Mark, played by Mitchell, was central to the hilariously dark Channel 4 comedy.

Olivia and David starred in the 1993 Footlights pantomime together, a production of Cinderella.

In the second term she also took part in the Footlights spring ­revue sketch show.

David wrote in his autobiography Backstory: “Suddenly she was shining with talent – working the audience, timing her lines, drawing out new laughs without ever seeming hammy.

“There were many talented actors at Cambridge while I was there, very few were as good as Collie – certainly no one better.”

From Cambridge she went to Bristol’s Old Vic theatre school but often visited David and his comedy partner Robert Webb at their flat above a Blockbuster shop in Swiss Cottage, North London.

She and David worked on a ­production of French playwright’s Moliere’s comedy The Miser, which they toured around UK schools.

Mitchell and Webb’s then flatmate Ellis Sareen, now a 44-year-old ­barrister, said: “It was impossible to go to bed if there was any alcohol in the flat still undrunk. Collie was always around. She was absolutely delightful.”

After graduating from Bristol in 1999, Olivia struggled to find acting work and took a typing course as well as doing a cleaning job. But in 2003 Mitchell and Webb cast her as Sophie.

Her talent led to roles in Channel 4’s offbeat comedy Green Wing and Simon Pegg’s 2007 rural cop comedy Hot Fuzz.

In 2011 she played Carol Thatcher to Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

This marked her move into more serious roles, such as Miller in the smash-hit detective drama Broadchurch.

She was heavily pregnant with her third child when she played Angela Burr ­opposite Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hollander in the adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Night Manager.

Colman was so good as the heroine determined to bring down an evil arms dealer that she won a Golden Globe.

She was highly acclaimed for her performances on stage in Hay Fever at the Noël Coward Theatre and in Mosquitoes at the National Theatre.

Most recently Olivia has played the deplorable, money-grabbing Madame Thenardier in Andrew Davies’ gripping version of Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Misérables.

This year she is taking over the role of the Queen from Claire Foy in the latest series of The Crown.

But despite her success, Colman’s friends insist she is keeping her feet firmly on the ground.

Jonathan said: “She’s not someone who’d let the fame go to her head. You wouldn’t see her demanding blue M&Ms or room temperature water or any of that. She just turns up and does the job.”

Her down to earth attitude was perfectly illustrated when she was invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace ­after the ­announcement of her role in The Crown.

She asked her husband to take home a keepsake from one the ­palace’s 78 bathrooms – two squares of loo roll.

It is a trophy that would look very strange next to an Oscar.

mirror.co.uk – Olivia Colman: What the nation’s favourite actress is REALLY like off screen

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.

Source: telegraph.co.uk – Olivia Colman ‘threatened’ by losing anonymity and says new-found fame has made her live like a hermit