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pregnant, and then in—well, pretty
much every role since. “It’s hard not to
cut back to her over and over. In the
words of our director Harry Bradbeer,
‘She’s a fucking Ferrari,’ ” says Phoebe
Waller-Bridge, in whose show Fleabag
Colman plays the protagonist’s arty,
pushy, maniacally cheerful stepmoth-
er-to-be. “She can be delightfully benign
and utterly grotesque at the same time.”
“Her talent is somewhat like Mozart’s
in Amadeus—and the rest of us just
watch like Salieri,” says Peter Morgan,
creator of The Crown. “She’s never
unprepared, and yet sometimes you
find out she’s just learned her lines in
the loo five minutes before.”
Colman’s signal moment came this
past winter, when she won a best-actress
Oscar for her performance in The
Favourite as Queen Anne: a childish,
heartbroken sovereign with a circle of
sycophants and the eye makeup of a
nightmare Ronette. Colman—“Collie”
to many friends—took to the
stage cracking self-deprecating
jokes while tearing up, recall-
ing her work as a house clean-
er and calling out her weep-
ing writer husband, Ed
Sinclair. (“He later said that
was the best night of his life,
and the kids went, ‘What?’ ”
Colman recalls. “ ‘To be fair,
watching your wife give birth
is very stressful.’ ”) “The person the
whole world saw, the way they fell in
love with her, not just her performance,
that’s who she is,” says Rachel Weisz,
a costar nominated for best supporting
actress along with Emma Stone, who
reports spending parts of the evening
in tears at the thrill of seeing someone
“so deeply good—and I don’t just
mean talent” recognized. (“She is kind
of a perfect woman,” Stone explains.)
In an industry that trades in illusion
and mystique, Colman has helped to
announce a down-to-earth age, a
moment in which the quality of star-
dom has begun to shift from the
unreachable to the exquisitely human.
“There’s no bullshit with her,” Tennant
says. “That’s true of her performances,
and it’s true of her as a person.”
Today Colman is busier than she’s
ever been, and her appetite for new
work is so strong that her agents block
out calendars with bright colors to
make sure she doesn’t double-book
herself. “If you’re working, you’re so
fucking lucky,” Colman says. “A lot of
actors better than me aren’t.” In late
summer, she appeared in the creepy
snake-populated indie thriller Them
That Follow, about a Pentecostal family
in Appalachia—a role that required
her to perfect a deep-rural American
accent. When we meet, she’s just been
let loose from production on The
Father, a film adaptation of Florian
Zeller’s play, starring opposite Antho-
ny Hopkins. She had July off and spent
it catching up on her watching (Cher-
nobyl and The Other Two, as well as
the reality show First Dates) and taking
long walks: a pleasure that fame forces
her to forgo in London. Come August,
she was back at work on the fourth
season of The Crown.
Colman has a double challenge
when it comes to Queen Elizabeth. On
one hand, she is playing a real, known
person whom she’s never spoken to at
length. (Colman did receive a more
sustained greeting from the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge after winning
a BAFTA this year. “I got over-grinny
and a bit nervous and was sort of
introducing Prince William to every-
body,” she says.) On the other, she
follows Foy, whom many viewers asso-
ciate with the role. “I sort of tried to
imagine how Claire would do it,” Col-
man says. “But I’m not actually the
queen and I’m not actually Claire Foy.”
Unlike the two of them, she also has
brown eyes, and contact lenses were
attempted, despite what Colman
describes as her “very strong eyelids.”
“It was basically like an exorcism: ‘Just
hold me down and thrust it in!’ ” she
recalls. Finally the production resigned
itself to a brown-eyed queen. Tobias
Menzies, who plays Prince Philip, was
not so fortunate in makeup: He had
the front of his hairline cropped to
mimic a thinning coif. “That’s com-
mitment, isn’t it?” Colman marvels.
“Because he’s got to go to Sainsbury’s
with a slightly shaved head.”
“She’s a bit obsessed with this,”
Menzies tells me dryly, touting her
buoyant attitude on set. (“The most
influential person on a set is the leader
of the company of actors, and Colman
is a brilliant leader and a brilliant
example,” Morgan says.) In private,
Colman’s Queen Elizabeth is chillier
than Foy’s, or at least more controlled,
as if time and experience have worn
down certain of her corners and hard-
ened her core, and the season explores
her vexed relationship with members
of the royal family. She must command
them while requiring their skills and
favors to safeguard her success.
Colman’s own professional and
artistic ascent is especially striking
because it did not happen overnight.
The truism in Hollywood has long
been that, although a man could
emerge into the klieg lights at almost
any age, a screen actress who didn’t
break through by her mid-30s had lost
her chance. For Colman, life
as a true movie star didn’t
begin until after 40; her coro-
nation holds the promise of a
slow, thrilling transformation
in the industry. “Definitely,
roles are getting more interest-
ing, complicated, and tex-
tured,” says Weisz, who, like
Colman, has been shining
brightest in her 40s. “But wom-
en in their 40s are interesting.” Over
breakfast, keeping one eye on the clock
because the second of her three chil-
dren has an early dismissal from
school, Colman tells me that she
doesn’t think she could have made it
big as a young actress, nor would she
have wanted to. “To be the ingenue
and to keep working is rare because
once people see you as that, they don’t
like the process of aging,” she explains.
“Which is fucking ridiculous!” She
meets my eyes. “I grew to my place.”
It is customary for Vogue to choose
its cover stars from emerging young
talent and soaring celebrity leaders.
At 45, Colman is a cover woman for a
new era: proof of the glamour of slow-
ly and devotedly building one’s life and
craft; a reminder that, for a rising gen-
eration of powerful women, it is pos-
sible to reach success and mastery
while remaining honest, patient,
healthy, whole. “Everyone shines a
little more when she is acting with
them,” says Waller-Bridge. “I will
“To be the ingenue and to keep
working is rare because once people
see you as that, they don’t like
the process of aging,” says Colman.
“I grew to my place”
