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always aspire to her level of brilliance,
but I’ve been equally inspired by who
she is as a person and a professional.
Work hard, and be nice to people. And
don’t take yourself too seriously. And
karaoke. I say those are the secrets to
being as close to Olivia Colman as
possible. Oh—and be hysterically fun-
ny and a genre-defying acting genius.”C
olman lives in South Lon-
don, in a timeworn, light-
filled house that she and
Sinclair purchased seven
years ago. It is nested in a quiet neigh-
borhood, leafy but not precious, with
parks not far away. On summer week-
ends, neighbors work in their front
yards, tending rosebushes and laven-
der. When I show up, it is the day after
the solstice—one of the bright summer
Saturdays in London that begin with
trees catching the early-morning winds
and end with a long, wild, lumi-
nous-blue gloaming sky. Sinclair, a
silver-haired man with a trim beard, is
dressed in cargo shorts and a daddish
button-down shirt, untucked; Colman
wears a casual charcoal-gray dress. I
get on my knees to greet the dogs:
Pockets, a Kokoni mix rescued from
Cyprus (who leaps to lick my face),
and her senior, Alfred, Lord Wag-
gyson, a magisterial terrier-poodle.
Sinclair is gathering children out the
door, bound for the market.
“Eggs?” he calls.
“I think we have enough,” Colman
says, gazing into the refrigerator.
“Sugar?”
The goods are for a barbecue that
they are hosting that evening. Sinclair,
who does the daily household cooking,
will be grillmaster. Colman, a hesitant
but dutiful baker, has been charged
with dessert. The Colman-Sinclairs
are close to their neighbors not just
proximally but socially—weekend
cookouts, shared playdates for the
kids—and the neighbors are in turn
protective of the woman they watched
grow from a hardworking actress to a
global star. “These streets are a lovely
community—they really look after
you,” Colman says, handing me a mug
of tea and leading me to her backyard,
which shimmers with summer green.
“I think I might never be able to com-
pletely leave London, even though I
do dream of buggering off to the
SET DESIGN BY MARY HOWARD STUDIO seaside.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 208