Olivia Colman

## External links

**Sarah Caroline Sinclair** (née **Colman**) is a British award-winning actress and producer. She portrays Sarah Nelson in the Netflix adaptation of *Heartstopper*.

## Biography

She was born in Norwich, the daughter of nurse Mary (née Leakey) and Chartered Surveyor Keith Colman.She was privately educated at Norwich High School for Girls and Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk. Her first role was Jean Brodie in a school production of *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* at the age of 16. She cites her mother's interrupted career as a ballet dancer as an inspiration to pursue acting professionally. Colman spent a term studying primary teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, from which she graduated in 1999. During her time at Cambridge, she appeared in the Channel 4 series *The Word* in 1995, under her nickname "Colly", auditioned for the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club and met future co-stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Colman had to adopt a different stage name when she began working professionally, because Equity (the UK actors' union) already had an actress named "Sarah Colman". "One of my best friends at university was called Olivia and I always loved her name," Colman told *The Independent* in 2013. "I was never Sarah; I was always called by my nickname, Colly, so it didn't seem so awful not to be called Sarah."

Colman was a subject of the UK genealogy programme *Who Do You Think You Are?* in July 2018. Although she expected that her family tree would mainly relate to Norfolk, it was discovered that her fourth great-grandfather, Richard Campbell Bazett, had been born on the island of Saint Helena and that he worked in London for the East India Company. Bazett's son, Colman's third great-grandfather Charles Bazett, married Harriot Slessor. Researchers discovered that she was born in the Indian city of Kishanganj, lost her British father when she was aged three, and then made the journey to England alone. Slessor's passage was paid for by her paternal grandmother. The episode speculated that Slessor's mother might have been Indian, but did not present concrete proof; after the episode aired, the Berkshire Record Office published the will of Slessor's mother, which proved that her name was Seraphina Donclere, evidently of European origin, and that she had died in 1810.

Colman is known for *Tyrannosaur Hannah* (2011), *The Crown* (2016), *The Favourite Queen Anne* (2018) and *The Lost Daughter Leda* (2021).

## References

1. ↑ Olivia Colman interview
2. ↑ Check out the photograph from Olivia Colman's family album which appears on her episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?
3. ↑ Olivia Colman: "I immediately knew I would marry him"
4. ↑ David Tennant Does a Podcast With...
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Maggie, Meryl, and my modest career
6. ↑ The Word s05e06 13/01/1995 - Sleeper, Frank Bruno, Aaliyah, Marc Almond, McAlmont
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Class act: Is Olivia Colman Britain's most versatile actress?
8. ↑ Famous alumni from Bristol's Old Vic Theatre School
9. ↑ Fame is quite scary
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Olivia Colman
11. ↑ Who Do You Think You Are? review: Olivia Colman was simply adorable
12. ↑ "I'm much more interesting than I thought I was": Olivia Colman heads to India for 'Who Do You Think You Are?'
13. ↑ Berkshire Family Historian - the quarterly journal of the Berkshire Family History Society, vol. 42, September 2018, p. 14
14. ↑ Anyone catch Who Do You Think You Are? last night?