Olivia Cooke

There's nothing the modest Mancunian actor likes more than a chat in her local café. But now she's starring in the new Game of Thrones prequel, ...

When she and Abbott broke up just before the pandemic, it was “another reason to come home”, she says. “I’ve always been quite protective of myself and known my limits,” she says, “and known if someone was taking the piss. “I feel like I’m reliving my early 20s.” Except this time, she adds, “I just feel so solid in who I am… (It was her idea to bleach her character’s eyebrows in Sound of Metal.) “Just to do all the work before is so freeing,” she says. “She had the role in her bones,” Cooke says, with awe. “It was a big old lovely cocktail: being homesick and not knowing it, having not stopped since I was 18, being on my own for large swathes of time.” “I’m so grateful for that job, but I had a really tough time on it,” she says. “I could natter and natter for hours.” “I find it really zapping of my energy,” she says, apologetically. She is friendly and familiar, greeting me with a hug and full of apology for being a few minutes late and “slightly sweaty”. “I resist things that are popular,” she says, “but to my own detriment, because it’s really fucking good.” “We’re going out more, we’re drinking more,” she says.