BRIT ACTRESS ON SHOCK
AS a struggling actress, Olivia Cooke was turned down by Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and drama school RADA.
But with a starring role in Steven Spielberg’s virtual reality blockbuster Ready Player One, the 24-year-old has taken her career to a different level.
And she has raked in bonus points by having two films released a week apart – with lead billing this weekend in dark comedy thriller Thoroughbreds.
Olivia says cheerfully of her failed soap auditions: “Thank God, thank God, thank God – I’d still be there now, five years later.”
But even she admits Hollywood was never in her game plan.
She says: “I don’t think I was ever attracted to it because I never thought it would happen.
“Being from the north of England, when you want to be an actor you only expect that you’re going to be a soap star. You’re like, ‘I wanna be an actress’ and ‘I wanna work with Spielberg’ – but you never think you really will.”
DUAL
Yet work with Spielberg she did, with the Ready Player One director handing her the dual role of Samantha and her virtual alter ego Art3mis.
Olivia grew up in Oldham, Lancs, where she went to a comprehensive school.
Her dad John, a retired policeman, and sales rep mum Lindsy, split when she was young. Olivia and younger sister Eleanor were brought up by Lindsy.
Olivia says: “My mum had to be both parents. She’s the person I call at one in the morning.”
The youngster fell in love with the stage after starting at Oldham Theatre Workshop aged eight.
Its alumni include Anna Friel, one-time Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley, and the late Anne Kirkbride – Corrie’s beloved Deirdre Barlow.
And her enthusiasm won her some early success, with a handful of “really cringey” ads, and a promo video for a One Direction tour in which she was carried piggyback by Harry Styles.
And then came her attempt to get into RADA – London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Olivia feels it was her northern accent that cost her a place in what she has called a “horrible auditioning process”.
She once recalled: “There was a voice teacher who singled out me and this girl from Wigan because we had northern accents.
“He told me to run on the spot while I was reading a monologue, and he was thumping me on the back really hard. I knew then I hadn’t got in.”
Nonetheless, after playing Maria in West Side Story in sixth form, she