Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman says that playing PC Doris Thatcher in Edgar Wright’s 2007 hit action-comedy Hot Fuzz was a career highlight. Though the role wasn’t an especially big one, Colman brought her own inimitable style to it. The end result provided audiences with a rare opportunity to see the star in the earlier stages of her career, at a time when she was more often associated with comedic projects than dramatic fare.
For many fans, Colman will forever be best known as Sophie, the love interest of the idiosyncratic Mark Corrigan in the hit British comedy series Peep Show. Colman’s casting as Sophie occurred four years before Hot Fuzz was released, and it was during this period that her ability as an actor to roll with strange and unorthodox situations became clear. That same degree of quirkiness is on display to some extent in Hot Fuzz, as her PC Thatcher character provided anything but a serious examination of life as a police officer in a small English village. The film was also the follow up to Wright’s first major release, 2004’s Shaun of the Dead. After its success, critics and fans alike were eager to see where the filmmaker would take things next. Hot Fuzz gave new insight into Wright’s abilities as an emerging talent, and also made a name for actors like Colman in the US market.
Fast forward over a decade since the arrival of Hot Fuzz and Colman’s career has grown considerably. The 47-year-old talent is widely acclaimed for her part in a variety of celebrated films and her Best Actress Oscar victory in 2018 for her portrayal of Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite was a phenomenal achievement. However, when asked about her role as PC Doris Thatcher in Hot Fuzz during an interview with Collider, Colman acknowledged it as a highlight of her career. Read her full comments below:
“Yeah, I mean she was like, you know, so much fun. She was dirty, um, yeah, she was fun. Nothing like a bit of girl on girl. Yeah, but it’s also quite nice to lay everyone to rest and move on and do different things, but that was a highlight of fun, yeah.”
Colman briefly switched to the character’s voice during her comments, and giggled throughout her recollections about Thatcher. For those not familiar with Hot Fuzz, the “girl on girl” comment might seem a bit out of place, but fans will know it as a Thatcher quote in the film’s third act, when she knocks box-cutter wielding supermarket employee Tina out with a wet floor sign. The character really was rife with quotable lines, particularly because she consistently found a way to turn any situation into a double entendre. Beneath the intriguing plot of Hot Fuzz, Thatcher added an additional layer of ineptitude to the Sanford police force and her performance provides several of the film’s best laughs.
It seems that Colman’s career continues to go from strength to strength and at present, the acclaim of her most recent film, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, is giving rise to the possibility of another Oscar-winning year for the actress. Equipped with an uncanny ability to traverse genres and deliver convincing performances regardless of the film or character she plays, Colman’s time on Hot Fuzz is more than just a role she took on her way to pre-eminent star status. Hopefully one day soon she’ll work with Wright again. Hot Fuzz fans would likely agree that a sequel to the film would be an absolute treat, especially with a return from PC Doris Thatcher.
Source: Collider
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Author: Mike Jones
