Olivia Colman was so overwhelmed by her Oscar win that it took a year to sink in.
The star who played the Queen in The Crown took the best actress gong for playing another monarch, in the drama The Favourite.
She said the 2019 win was a big pinch-me moment: “It was such a “head f***”. I can’t believe it happened.
“I went quiet. It is only a year later that it registered and now the little gold man is sitting in a cupboard.”
The versatile 47-year-old, who found fame in comedy Peep Show, nearly won a second little gold man. She was up for this year’s best supporting actress Oscar for The Father.
It would have been a fair reward for one our finest and most hardworking actresses.
Although she has joked that the most committed she has ever been was not to acting but to pursuing her husband.
She met Ed Sinclair at Cambridge University and claims she stalked him.
They starred together in a Footlights production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners.
Olivia spent six weeks memorising the lyrics to the songs he liked and his timetable before professing her love for him through a mutual friend.
She said: “I sort of stalked him. Which I don’t condone. It did work in our case.
“I remind him every day that he is a very lucky man.
“I took three hours to get dressed every day. He was not aware of what was going on.
“Eventually I just told his friend to tell him I loved him and eventually his friend did.”
They both got places at Bristol Old Vic theatre school and married in August 2001, and have three children.
In an online chat with BAFTA for the National Theatre she recalled her 2019 Oscar win for playing Queen Anne. Co-stars Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were both up for best supporting actress.
She said: “I said let’s not get excited. This cannot happen. Let’s enjoy what is happening. Say hello to amazing people and try and enjoy the night.
“We got there and we were put in a corner, quite a long way from the stage and I could almost cry at the moment they said my name. I feel a bit embarrassed that it happened.”
She said the win has added to her fear of being on stage.
“I am not very good with people knowing me and I don’t know them. It is an unfortunate downside to a job I absolutely love when everybody gets to know your face.
“I try to keep myself in a safe bubble to keep loving what I do, know the people I trust and try not to look at what other people might be thinking.”
