Olivia Williams

Biography

Olivia Haigh Williams (born 26 July 1968) is a British actress who has appeared in British and American films and television. Williams studied drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for two years followed by three years at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Her first significant screen role was as Jane Fairfax in the British television film Emma (1996), based on Jane Austen's novel.

She made her film debut in 1997's The Postman, followed by Rushmore (1998) and The Sixth Sense (1999). Williams also acted in the British films Lucky Break (2001), The Heart of Me (2002), and An Education (2009).

She continued acting in films such as The Ghost Writer (2010), Hanna (2011), Anna Karenina (2012), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), Maps to the Stars (2014), Victoria & Abdul (2017), and The Father (2020).

From 2017 to 2019, she played Emily Silk in the science fiction television series Counterpart. In 2022, Williams portrayed Camilla Parker Bowles in the Netflix historical drama The Crown in its fifth season, a role she is set to reprise in its sixth and final season.

Williams was born in North London. Both her parents are barristers. Williams was educated at South Hampstead High School, an independent school for girls in Hampstead in north London, followed by Newnham College, Cambridge, from which she graduated with a degree in English literature.

She then studied drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for two years and spent three years at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Williams had a seven-year relationship and then engagement to the actor Jonathan Cake which ended two weeks before their planned wedding. In 2003, she married the actor and playwright Rhashan Stone, with whom she has two daughters.

After filming The Postman, she spent time in Bolivia studying spectacled bears in the rainforest.

Williams was diagnosed with VIPoma in 2018 and, after treatment, became an ambassador for Pancreatic Cancer UK.

Known for

The Father

Actor

2021

The Father as Catherine