12 Things You Need to Know About Golden Globe-Winning Queen, Olivia Colman

As the first actress to play Elizabeth II in The Crown, you might have expected Claire Foy to pass on some advice before Colman takes over. But she didn't think it was necessary. We're both playing two very different women in a sense and she's an absolutely extraordinary actress, so she doesn't need me to give my twopence," Foy told The Daily Mail.

When you think of a period piece about a former monarch (in this case Queen Anne), you typically imagine sedate, dignified characters, but her movie The Favourite is a dark comedy with a "cheerfully obscene" script in which she gives an "uproarious performance", according to The Guardian.

Producer of BBC comedy Fleabag Lydia Hampson revealed to the Radio Times that the show's creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge expanded the evil godmother role with Colman in mind after she asked to be involved and confided, "I'd love to play a real bitch."

Olivia made brief appearances in the UK version of The Office and hospital drama Holby City, but being cast as Sophie in the hugely successful comedy series Peep Show in 2003 kick-started her comedy career. Roles in many more British comedies followed.

Colman met her husband Ed Sinclair at the University of Cambridge's drama society, Footlights. She told The Daily Mail she immediately thought, "There's the bloke I'm going to marry." They've now been together for more than 20 years and have two sons and a daughter, ages 13, 11, and 3.

It's not every actor who gets name-checked during a Meryl Streep acceptance speech. But when Streep won a BAFTA in 2012 for portraying Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, she paid tribute to Colman, who played her daughter Carol, calling her "divinely gifted". Meryl would know.

Olivia was newly pregnant when she met with director Susanne Bier about playing spy Angela in The Night Manager, a character that was never intended to be pregnant. Worried it might lose her the gig, she blabbed immediately, but Bier said that in Fargo (in which Frances McDormand's character is pregnant), "the pregnancy added to the drama," Colman told HuffPost.

Olivia didn't fly to LA to collect her Golden Globe for The Night Manager, because she didn't think she'd win and didn't want to be jet-lagged before starting work on Murder on the Orient Express. Luckily, she did make the trip to pick up her award for The Favourite, and she even got a bit sassy backstage.

Colman told What's On TV she was "terrified" to sing as part of the ensemble of 2015 musical mystery movie London Road. Good job, then, that the BBC's adaptation of Les Misérables, in which she plays Madame Thénardier, was taken from the book rather than the musical and didn't require her to sing.

In 2018, Olivia took part in Amnesty International's Women Making History festival. She's also been a high-profile supporter of Marie Curie and London-based anti-domestic violence charity Tender. She was recently named patron of blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan.