Olivia Colman awarded CBE in Queen’s birthday honours list

Olivia Colman – The Crown, has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours, adding to her haul of awards in 2019. Colman has already won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe this year for her performance as another British monarch, Queen Anne, in the film The Favourite.

The actor, who receives the honour under her real name, Sarah Sinclair (she was born Sarah Caroline Olivia Colman and married Ed Sinclair in 2001), said she was “totally thrilled, delighted and humbled” to be in the company of her fellow honourees “most of whom have been nowhere near as visible as I have, but should be – and hopefully now will be.”

The sculptor Rachel Whiteread and Laura Lee, the chief executive of the Maggie’s cancer centres, become dames, and the actor Simon Russell Bealeand Simon Woolley, the founder of Operation Black Vote, are both knighted.

Beale, best known for his stage performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company and elsewhere, said: “I think my mother, were she alive, would be very proud.”

Lee said she was “overwhelmed and humbled … but I feel the honour is less in recognition of myself and more an acknowledgement of what Maggie’s does.”

Prof Mark Caulfield, the chief scientist and head of the 100,000 Genomes project, Robert Cohan, the 94-year-old founding artistic director of The Place theatre, and Boyd Tunnock, the founder of the confectionery firm and creator of the Tunnock’s teacake, also receive knighthoods.

Tunnock, who is 86 and is honoured for services to business and charity, said: “When you get to my age very few things surprise you, but this certainly did and I am deeply honoured and grateful to Her Majesty the Queen. Our primary purpose in life is to help others who are less fortunate than ourselves. Our country is full of very worthwhile causes that we can all make a contribution to in some way.”

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