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She was the toast of the Baftas but what will Olivia Colman do next?

Quite a lot. She has already shot Run, a drama set in Brixton, which will run over four consecutive nights on Channel 4 in July. And she is currently shooting The 7.39, a “love story for grown-ups” written by David Nicholls (One Day) for the BBC. She plays the wife of David Morrissey, who falls for another woman (Sheridan Smith) on his commute.

Next year, she returns to comedy with Mr Sloane, a six-part 1960s sitcom for Sky Atlantic, in which she plays Mrs Sloane to Nick Frost’s hapless hero. She will also play Frost’s sister in Cuban Fury, a comedy film about salsa-dancing, due for release in January 2014.

Meanwhile, Locke, a British thriller by Dirty Pretty Things’ Steven Knight, in which she co-stars with Tom Hardy and Ruth Wilson has just been snapped up by Lionsgate films. And the second series of Broadchurch goes into production early next year. In other words – plenty more opportunities for awards.

Source: independent.co.uk – what will Olivia Colman do next after Bafta and Broadchurch success, quite a lot actually

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

Olivia Colman is to acting what Germany is to car making and gravity is to the universe – she is technically excellent and manages to be everywhere all at once. Two Bafta TV nominations this year – an unusual combination of best supporting actress (for Accused) and best comedy performance (for Twenty Twelve) prove how diverse her talents are. You could even say she is to acting what Gareth Bale is to football: hailed by peers, critics and millions of viewers.

From the soft-shelled cop in Broadchurch to the Queen Mother in Hyde Park on Hudson to foul-mouthed marriage counsellor in I Give It a Year to saucy vicar’s wife in Rev and, soon, Sheridan Smith’s love rival in David Nicholls’s BBC1 romantic drama The 7.39, she manages to steal scenes while staying firmly in character. With such outrageous talent you might expect her to be a diva to work with, but her co-stars are her biggest fans. Meryl Streep, no slouch in the acting department herself, called Colman “divinely gifted” during her own 2012 Bafta acceptance speech (Colman played her daughter Carol in The Iron Lady).

Typically, asking actors to explain a colleague’s mastery of their art is a thankless task. Actors are always busy or, if not, keen to pretend they are. Many have a habit of moving on emotionally from a project once it’s finished. And of course they often fall out with each other. In the case of Colman, however, David Tennant was on the phone within minutes of a tentative approach from Radio Times.

“Before Broadchurch I’d only worked with Olivia once, on a bone-dry read-through of a brittle sitcom that got binned by bored executives,” says Tennant of his co-star. “I’d seen her work for years and she gave the impression of being really sound and straightforward and unpretentious. So when I met her and found she really was those things, it was a massive relief.”

What’s her secret? “She has this ability to be joking between takes and then, when the cameras roll, to be instantly in the heart of the darkness – which is irritatingly perfect from someone as alarmingly down to earth,” he jokes. “The one thing she hated about filming Broadchurch was how she found each situation so appalling that she’d genuinely be in floods of tears during scenes. She kept trying to stop, saying, ‘I shouldn’t be crying, I’m a police officer.’ But it came to represent the part so well.

“We have a similar outlook on life and work, although she’s a devil, always trying to get us to go out and get drunk while I’m always keen to get home early and make a cup of tea, so we counteract each other’s excess. I hope she wins both awards, unless there’s a friend of mine I haven’t noticed on either list, in which case I’ll be appalled – and that’s my official statement.”

Tennant, of course, is a true gentleman. But Colman’s name brings an equally rapid reaction from colleagues she’s worked with across her career.

Her co-stars in Twenty Twelve – Hugh Bonneville, Amelia Bullmore and Jessica Hynes – are effusive and jovial. “Olivia thinks talking about acting technique is a load of old twaddle,” Bonneville explains. “She’s right, of course, but just for the record I want to share this observation: Olivia Colman can’t act. There, I’ve said it. She really can’t. She can’t act because she can only be: she has a phenomenal ability to be utterly spontaneous in every role she plays, even though it may have been rehearsed for six weeks or, in the case of Twenty Twelve, six minutes. Her comedic and dramatic range is extraordinary, as is her natural gift of being loved by everyone she works with. What a cow.”

Amelia Bullmore agrees. “What Olivia does is this: she turns up on set, giggles a bit, wrinkles her nose at herself, smiles at everyone, goofs about, gets to a take and then says what she has to say with a lightness of touch and live-ness and see-through-ness that is truly rare, as many times as is required, and then resumes the nose-wrinkling and goofing. It’s double finesse – what she’s able to do, and how insouciantly she wears that remarkable skill.”

Of course, this isn’t completely unexpected. When the 2012 movie Bafta shortlists were announced, the strongest trending topic on celebrity Twitter feeds was “Wot, no Colman?” David Baddiel, Shappi Khorsandi and Josie Lawrence all expressed surprise. “Shocked and disappointed with Bafta voters,” tweeted Great Expectations and Exile star Shaun Dooley. “You will not see a finer performance by an actress than Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur. Not happy!”

Why does Colman demand such respect? In part, clearly, it’s her raw talent. She went to Cambridge with dreams of being a primary school teacher. Robert Webb and David Mitchell knocked that plan off course when she met them at an audition for the Cambridge Footlights. For a while, after drama school, she was best known as Webb and Mitchell’s female foil, goofing around in both Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look, before moving into warmer supporting roles in comedies like Green Wing, graduating to dramas like Tyrannosaur, Accused and Broadchurch, while keeping her foot in the comedy camp with Rev. “She’s fantastic and can do anything,” Webb explains. “She’s very funny but also a great dramatic actress.”

In following this arc, she joins a very small, elite band of performers who are equally at home with intense drama and ridiculous slapstick. Many have tried it – from Eddie Izzard to Steve Coogan – but only a handful – like Hugh Laurie or Julie Walters – succeed. John Simm knows why Colman can.

When Olivia was cast as my sister in Exile, I was already a huge fan of her work, which at the time had been mainly comedy,” he explains. “I made sure I sat next to her in the read-through so I could talk to her about Rev. Exile was a pretty full-on, disturbing story so it could have been a pretty bleak filming experience, but it ended up being one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever done. This was down, in no small part, to Olivia. It really was a joy to go to work, with her as my sis. We laughed. A lot. And what an actress. From our first scene together we seemed to just click. She makes it look effortless. She’s not acting, she’s being.

“This may seem like a cliché, and there’s a risk it’ll make her puke, but in this case it really is a hundred per cent true. As anyone who has worked with her will confirm, Olivia Colman is one of the most beautiful, genuine, compassionate, wickedly funny and insanely talented human beings on the planet. And next time I see her she’ll probably cuff me round the ear for this.”

Colman, by all accounts, is so fundamentally nice that she charms cast and crew alike. Even Jessica Hynes, her rival for a Bafta for Twenty Twelve, offers unstinting praise. “Olivia has a luminescent quality. She shines in everything she does. She is a responsive listener and brilliant at channeling her character’s emotions and letting that do the talking.”

And then, not even through gritted teeth, she adds. “I agree with David. She should win both awards – this is definitely a Colman year and hopefully the first of many.”

FIVE OF HER BEST

1. Broadchurch

As local cop DS Ellie Miller, passed over for promotion by David tennant’s abrasive newcomer DI Hardy, Colman steals the show with her no-nonsense anoraks, tears and fear of becoming hardened. She’s kindly, tough, irritable and very real — making the killer plot finale a thrilling heartbreaker.

2. Rev

Alex Smallbone — Colman’s passionate, smart and straight-talking solicitor wife of Tom Hollander’s hapless inner-city vicar Adam — mixes charm and sex appeal with some of the best swearing on TV..

3. Accused

Colman turns in an award-winning (and Bafta-nominated) performance as Sue, who watches her best friend Mo (Anne-Marie Duff) take a stand against gang culture on their grim estate, only to suffer a tragic loss herself when the backlash starts.

4. Tyrannosaur

Colman brings a curious sense of hope and transcendence to another award-winning role — a demanding job in the face of an emotional waterboarding from writer/director Paddy Considine. Hannah, a charity-shop worker, is viciously abused by her husband (Eddie Marsan) and assailed by an alcoholic stranger (Peter Mullan) who bullies his way into her life.

5. Peep Show

The deliciously awkward Sophie — initially the object of hopeless obsession for David Mitchell’s Mark, later becoming his girlfriend and, briefly, his wife — proved Colman’s breakthrough role after years of playing minor characters.

Source: radiotimes.com – Olivia Colman is compassionate wickedly funny and insanely talented