Olivia Colman has revealed she battled with Wikipedia to get her age changed after discovering the website had it listed incorrectly.
The British actor, who is Oscar-nominated in the Best Actress category for her role in The Favourite, noticed the online free encyclopedia had added eight years on to her age.
She emailed them under a false identity so that she didn’t appear “vain” – but didn’t get a response.
“I didn’t get a reply, and wrote again going ‘sorry guys, but I know it’s wrong’. And they didn’t reply,” Colman, 44, revealed on a new podcast hosted by her former Broadchurch co-star, David Tennant.
“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.’ They said, ‘we’d have to see a birth certificate to prove it’, and I went, ‘whose f***ing birth certificate have you looked at in the first place to make me eight years older?”’ she quipped.
At the time of writing, the site listed her age correctly – however, ten minutes later, it was back to being incorrect.
The actor also said that she “can’t cope” with being recognised in public and now “lives like a hermit” now her profile has risen following her performance in The Favourite.
However, she maintained that she doesn’t begrudge people approaching her as being recognised goes “hand-in-hand with... getting work that I’m loving and always dreamt of”.
The Golden Globe-winning Colman will overtake Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth in the forthcoming season of The Crown.
