Olivia - Colman

Here is how a 50-year-old mother-of-three from Norfolk became the most versatile actor working today. Unlike the child stars of Disney or the Juilliard prodigies, Colman’s rise was a slow burn. After a brief stint as a secretary, she studied teaching at Cambridge, where she fell in with the Cambridge Footlights crowd (including future collaborators David Mitchell and Robert Webb).

That ordinariness, however, turned out to be her greatest weapon. The moment the world realized Colman was something special wasn't a movie—it was a crime scene. In Broadchurch , as Detective Ellie Miller, she played a mother whose son had been murdered. The scene where she identifies the body isn't loud. It doesn't involve shrieking. It involves her body folding in on itself, a physical collapse of grief so real it feels intrusive to watch. Olivia Colman

When Olivia Colman tripped on her way to collect her Best Actress Oscar for The Favourite in 2019, she didn’t try to style it out. She giggled, swore, and called the moment "stressful." In that single, chaotic stumble, she captured exactly why we love her. Here is how a 50-year-old mother-of-three from Norfolk