“I must try to be cooler”: The role Olivia Colman has dreamed of playing for decades
Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend that the same woman who played a drunken mess sobbing on the floor of a toilet in Peep Show also won an Oscar for starring in a Yorgos Lanthimos film. Olivia Colman has done it all.
The actor’s roots in British television have seen her appear in the likes of Green Wing, That Mitchell and Webb Look, and Beautiful People, asserting her genius as a comedic talent possessing such natural ease in front of the camera. Success on the silver screen didn’t come until later in her career, though, gradually taking on higher profile roles across British and American cinema before landing the role of Queen Anne in The Favourite. With that, she won an Academy Award.
Not every actor gets their start on the big screen, and sometimes it takes a while for a performer to graduate to the upper ranks of Hollywood. After all, it’s rare you’re going to rise to the top of your craft straight away – well, unless you’re a child prodigy. Colman can rest easy in the knowledge that many stars haven’t become movie stars straight away, like Judi Dench, of whom she is a massive fan.
Dench didn’t become well-known on the big screen until a few decades into her career, instead preferring to hone her craft on the stage. She became one of Britain’s premium theatre stars, and this eventually led her to take on roles in British movies. Of course, her talents could hardly be ignored; Dench was soon cast in larger roles, and by 1998, she had an Oscar under her belt for Shakespeare in Love.
One of the most notable parts she has become known for, however, is playing M in the James Bond series, a character she first portrayed in 1995’s GoldenEye. The character had always been played by a man, with Bernard Lee assuming the role of M first, but Dench made history when she stepped into the part. She has since played the character seven more times, with her character (spoiler alert) meeting her demise at the end of Skyfall.
Ralph Fiennes has since played Gareth Mallory, who serves as M’s successor, but it’s Colman who is dying for the role of M in some capacity. Talking to Vogue, Colman gushed when she was compared to Dench, before adding, “The amount of time I have wanted to be M. I’m not sure who I need to call…”
Revealing that she once met producer Barbara Broccoli, she added, “I wanted to go, ‘Can I be M?’ I must try to be cooler about it. Maybe she reads Vogue? Put that bit in.”
Colman certainly has what it takes to play a new variation of M; you can imagine her playing the character with Dench’s cold and authoritative approach. That’s the great thing about Colman, she just seems to perfectly understand how to play a character who is scary and not to be messed with, just as well as she can be bubbly and loveable. Just remember her performance in Fleabag.
With the upcoming Bond movies still shrouded in mystery – just who exactly is going to play the next 007 agent? – perhaps there’ll be space in the cast for Colman to get in on a chance to portray M after all.
