OSCARS SPECIAL
Brit Olivia looking to join the royalty of Hollywood:
Olivia Colman will be hoping to make it a dream hat-trick at the O scars tonight.
The star of period drama The Favourite is the darling of the awards season, having triumphed at both the Golden Globe and the Baftas.
Now it’s thought to be a straight head- to- head fight between Olivia and Screen Actors Guild winner Glenn Close for the Best Actress Academy Award.
And if Col man does come out on top it will be a remarkable renaissance, coming 15 years after she says she was left typecast and missing out on work because of an AA TV advert.
But Bill Paterson, her co-star in comedy Fleabag which returns at the start of next month, insists Colman will handle the Hollywood hype without any hoopla. The Scot says even international recognition won’t turn her head.
“We were filming the first episode of this new series of Fleabag in a restaurant,” Bill, 73, told The Sunday Post. “It was a long, long Sunday stuck at the table and Olivia was as bright as a button at 6am. But she had literally just come off a plane having received the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival.
“She hadn’t known about it until the Friday night and she was jetted out, put into a frock and jetted back.
“She only had a drink on the plane, there wasn’t even time for the reception. So when she joined us on the set first thing she was really at the eye of the storm of her success.
“But she just hit the ground running with no effort involved.”
Colman appeared in the Kev and Bev advert in 2004, saying she expected it’d only have a brief run but which ended being screened extensively.
“They ran it for a year having just given me a buy- out,” she said. “It was really annoying. I lost some jobs.”
Olivia’s subsequent work included comedies Peep Show and Twenty Twelve and dramas like Broadchurch, alongside David Tennant, and The Night Manager.
Her performance as Queen Anne in The Favourite, also starring previous Oscar winners Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, has garnered almost universal
acclaim. And she’ll make a regal move from the 18th to the 20th Century in a few months’ time when she takes over from Claire Foy as the Queen in the third series of Netflix’ s lavish The Crown.
Olivia is Godmother in Fleabag and having worked together Bill, who gets engaged to her in the opening episode, says he got a close- up look at h ow she delivers killer performances, be it comedy or drama.
“She just doesn’t give any sense that switching the gears will be difficult,” said Bill.
“She treats it seriously, of course, but not too seriously and she was always lively and funny.
“She carries it all lightly, even when she was shooting The Crown at the same time and all our schedules were dependent on whether or not they needed her.”