Queen Olivia’s ready to clean up at the Oscars
. . . just as soon as she’s done the school run and finished the washing!
AFTER doing the school run and ‘the washing’, actress Olivia Colman is heading to Hollywood for Sunday’s Oscar ceremony.
The star is this close to winning the best actress Academy Award for her sublime portrayal of Queen Anne in director Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark comedy The Favourite.
Having conversed with many members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who vote for the Oscars, the Golden statuette will go to Colman or to classy Glenn Close, nominated (for the seventh time) for her brilliant exploration of a neglected spouse in The Wife.
It’s her fourth tilt at the ‘actress in a leading role’ trophy — the other times being for Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons and Albert Nobbs. (The other nominations were for supporting roles.) Several voters noted that Ms Close might not have another shot at Oscar, so they should reward her now.
We’ll know when actors Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell open the envelope on Sunday.
I keep thinking of the moment when I saw Colman in Paddy Considine’s powerful movie Tyrannosaur at the Sundance Film Festival eight years ago. It made me grasp how magnificent she can be.
During the whole awards season, the actress has been filming the third season of The Crown, in which she plays our beloved current monarch. She has now finished shooting and, as she told me a while back: ‘I’ll be doing the school run and the washing . . . there’ll be piles of it!’ Season three, which ends at the time of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, will be streamed on Netflix in November. Well before then, Colman will be back in front of the cameras playing Elizabeth for the fourth series, in which she goes head to head with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who will be portrayed by Gillian Anderson. So whatever happens on Sunday, Olivia Colman still rules.