Olivia Colman admits she hid her Oscar in a cupboard - and it didn't end well

Actress Olivia Colman is so down-to-earth, she once stored her coveted Oscar in a cupboard. The Crown star won the Best Actress gong in 2019 for playing Queen Anne in hit movie, The Favourite.

But rather than give the golden statuette pride of place, she hid it away in a damp unit – where it had to be rescued by her handyman. Olivia, 51, confessed: “I don’t have anything out on show at home… I find it a little bit showy-offy. It was in a cupboard in our sitting room, but we’ve discovered the cupboard’s a bit damp."

“We live in a very old house – the front of it is 1600 – so it’s pretty but it is a bit damp."

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“And our lovely Darren – who’s a carpenter, handyman, painter – he opened the cupboard and went, ‘Are you f***ing kidding? You know it’s damp in here?’ So he made me take it out and I’ve now got it on a bookshelf, but behind a book, so that I know it’s there and I can say ‘Hello’ to him.”

Olivia is back on the big screen this month in The Roses – a fresh take on the 1989 Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner hit, The War of the Roses. She plays Ivy Rose to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Theo.

Olivia describes Sherlock star Benedict as “just so enthusiastic and like a great big, intelligent human Labrador”.

She added: “Tony McNamara, the writer, he loved War of the Roses, as we all did, and he’s slightly changed it a bit so it’s called The Roses, but that was definitely a big influence.”

Olivia’s husband Ed Sinclair is also a producer on the film. The couple, who married in 2001, have three children and have been getting to grips with a quieter home after their eldest left home for university.

On the SmartLess podcast, Olivia said: “Oh God, empty nesting… it’s heartbreaking. “Our big one is in his second year of uni. When he was about to go – we knew for a year, obviously, he was going to go to uni – I pre-grieved. Every time he walked past me, I’d burst into tears. I just imagined him going back to being a baby in my arms.

“He was so sweet – he would give me a cuddle, knew I needed it. My husband was going, ‘It’ll be great, it’s exciting, this is what you want for them’. And then on the day we were driving him to uni, our youngest came out of the gate and watched us drive down the road and stood there waving and Ed burst into tears. I went, ‘Are you f***ing kidding? We’ve got five hours in the car, you can’t start!’”

Of her kids, Olivia added: “Two are boys and one’s a girl so it’s a bit of difference there, but also not really. I feel when people talk about the difference between genders, I don’t really see it between them. They are nearly 20, nearly 18, and nearly 10 so there was a bit of a gap.

“We were home and dry and went back in and had another.”

Elsewhere in her interview, Olivia confessed to being hooked on “s*** reality telly” and revealed her favourite is currently Netflix ’s Too Hot To Handle because “it’s hilarious”.

She also admitted that she was glad she found fame a little later in life as it made her appreciate the roles she ending up taking on.

Olivia added: “I think in the early years, you know, not working very often was actually brilliant because it made me very grateful for work. And I think it’s better that way around than doing really well straight away.”

Olivia’s full interview is on the all-new SmartLess podcast. The Roses is in cinemas from August 29.

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