It seemed like Olivia Colman was everyone's new best friend after she accepted the Academy Award for Best Actress with a humble and hilarious acceptance speech on Sunday night –so it should come as a surprise that we don't even know the star's real name! While 'Olivia Colman' is her professional acting name, the Oscar winner opted to change it from her birth name, which is Sarah Caroline Olivia Colman.
© Photo: Getty ImagesOlivia's real name is Sarah
As such, the Hollywood A-lister instead uses her middle name professionally, much like the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who uses her middle name instead of her first name, Rachel. During the Peep Show star's acceptance speech for Best Actress, which she won due to her role as Queen Anne in the period comedy drama The Favourite, Olivia thanked yet another star who had changed her name when becoming an actress – Emma Stone.
Emma's name is actually Emily, but she was forced to change it professionally when the name 'Emily Stone' was already taken with the Screen Actor's Guild. Explaining the situation to W magazine, she said: "You know, my real name is Emily. But it was taken at SAG. To ask a 16-year-old to pick a new name is really an interesting process, because I was like, 'I'm going to be Riley. My name is going to be Riley Stone'. And so my name was Riley Stone for about six months and I did a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle and one day they were like, 'Riley, Riley,' and I had no idea who they were talking to and they were like, "Hey, hey come on we need you on set. And I was like, 'Oh I'm not Riley, I can't be Riley.'" In her speech, Olivia said: "With Emily and Rachel, the two loveliest women in the world to go to work with every day. You can imagine, this wasn't a hardship."
