Olivia Colman has won the best actress Oscar in Hollywood for her role in The Favourite. Colman beat Glenn Close – who had been considered a shoo-in for her role in The Wife – Lady Gaga, Yalitza Aparicio and Melissa McCarthy to the prize.
Colman began her emotional speech by saying the experience of winning was “genuinely quite stressful” and that “this is hilarious! I’ve got an Oscar!”
She also apologised to Close, saying, “You’ve been my idol for so long – this is not how I wanted it to be”.
Apologising to anyone she would forget in her speech with the promise of giving them “a massive snog” later, she thanked Lanthimos, as well as Stone and Weisz, “the two loveliest women in the world to go to work with”.
Colman, 44, then thanked her parents, her longstanding agent and her new publicists, her three children, who she hoped were watching at home “because this isn’t going to happen again”.
She also thanked her husband, Ed Sinclair, with whom she has been for 25 years, calling him “my best friend”. “I love you so much,” she concluded, noting that she had been asked to wrap up her speech, before gurgling in genuflection in front of Lady Gaga.
It caps an extraordinary awards run for the 44-year-old, who took best actress in a comedy or musical at the Golden Globes in January and best actress at the Baftas in February, as well as a slew of smaller awards.
The Favourite went into Sunday night’s ceremony jointly leading the nominations, with 10, alongside Roma. In the film, which is considered one of the most adventurous to progress to such an elevated position at the Oscars, Colman stars as Queen Anne, the erratic and gout-ridden monarch who finds her heart torn between longtime companion Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and Churchill’s cousin, Abigail Masham (Emma Stone).
In his review of the film, Peter Bradshaw said Colman “steps up to movie-star lead status with an uproarious performance as Britain’s needy and emotionally wounded Queen Anne in this bizarre black comedy”.
Speaking to the Guardian at the start of The Favourite’s ascension, Colman admitted that she was allergic to the kind of attention Oscar campaigns involve. “The awards chat makes me want to be sick in my mouth,” she said, before adding: “If I’m really honest, I’ve always dreamed of holding an Oscar.”
