The first Game of Thrones prequel to air on television, House Of The Dragon, introduces a slew of new characters to Westeros, including Olivia Cooke as a young Alicent Hightower. Alicent, the King’s Hand’s daughter, is dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms.”
Despite having appeared in several blockbuster films and hugely popular TV shows in her early career, Olivia Cooke has largely avoided the spotlight. With a significant role as Alicent Hightower in HBO’s eagerly awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series, “House of the Dragon,” she shouldn’t be too content with her current level of anonymity.
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
| Full Name | Olivia Kate Cooke |
| Birth Date | 27 December 1993 |
| Birth Place | Oldham, Greater Manchester, England |
| Age | 28 years old |
| Profession | Actress |
| Years Active | 2012-Present |
| Father | John Cooke |
| Mother | Lindsay Wilde |
| Sister | Eleanor |
| Height | 5′ 5½” (1.66 m) |
| Nickname | Liv |
| Education | Royton and Crompton Academy, Oldham Sixth Form College |
| Known For | Becky Sharp in the miniseries Vanity Fair (2018) |
When Olivia Cooke was a child, her parents divorced
Lindsay Wilde and John Cooke gave birth to Olivia Cooke. Her parents divorced when she was a young girl, so she and her sister moved in with their mother. Living apart from her father must have been difficult for her throughout her childhood. Her mother, on the other hand, has raised her well.
She made her acting debut at the Oldham Theatre Workshop, a local after-school theater organization, when she was eight years old. She studied acting at Oldham Sixth Form College while attending Royton and Crompton Academy, but she dropped out before finishing her A-levels to work on the drama series Blackout.
In a college production of West Side Story, she played Maria. Soon after, she was cast in Prom: The Musical, an Oldham Theatre Workshop adaptation of Cinderella. This was her first and only significant role. At the age of 14, she opened her first local agency, which helped her land commercial opportunities.
Details About Her Father and Mother
Her father was a former cop, and her mother worked in sales. You would appear to be mistaken if you assumed that having a former police officer as a father would have helped Liv stay in line as a child.
The “Thoroughbreds” actress admitted to Interview magazine that she was “just pretty crazy” in her adolescence, even admitting to wearing a bodycon dress and stiletto heels to clubs. “It’s humiliating.”
As she approaches the end of her twenties, the formerly wild youngster looks back on some of her earlier actions with a more critical eye.
In fact, when speaking to SyFy in 2021 for her film “Little Fish,” in which a virus causes widespread, unexpected memory loss, Cooke was asked which memory she would prefer to lose. She claimed that using a fake ID in Manchester when she was 17 was one of her worst memories.
Cooke’s appearance in the One Direction music video for “Autumn Term” was one of the roles that catapulted her to fame, though it was far from the start of her acting career. In a nutshell, she was hired after performing the splits when asked to demonstrate a party trick during a trial run.
She was 17 years old when she first appeared in a One Direction music video. Harry Styles even gives her a piggyback ride in the video. Cooke was paid 250 pounds sterling for her performance.
Olivia Was Rejected From A Prominent Drama School
If you’re serious about pursuing a career in acting, you’ve probably never heard of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), one of the world’s most prestigious theater schools.
The illustrious institution, founded in London in 1904, has welcomed some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Andrew Lincoln, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Anthony Hopkins, to name a few. Olivia Cooke, it turns out, was on her way to becoming one of RADA’s most notable alumni.
Cooke’s breakthrough with “I May Destroy You” Paapa Essiedu and Hero Magazine had a “head-to-head” interview in which they discussed a wide range of topics, from their early works to their current endeavors.
Essiedu once questioned Cooke about her drama school attendance, and the “Pixie” actress admitted that while she had advanced to the final stage of the RADA audition procedure, she had been rejected.
Cooke, on the other hand, was not too upset because she had received her letter of rejection from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on the same day she had been cast as the lead in The Quiet Ones.
She appeared alongside breakout stars Sam Claflin and Jared Harris in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” That simply proves the adage, “when one door closes, another opens.”
Olivia’s Portrayal in Naked Singularity Makes The Actor Think of Her Sister in Real Life
Olivia Cooke’s character in “Naked Singularity” reminds her of her real-life sister. The 28-year-old actress, who co-stars in the comedy-drama film with Bill Skarsgard and John Boyega, admits that her younger sister, Eleanor, plays a role in the film in some ways.
She claimed that while filming the film in 2019, she was struck by how much the character resembled her sister. “Although she has changed somewhat since then, she still had those same topknots, lashes, and nails,” she explained. I wanted to play a character like that without ripping her off or upsetting her, just as a Brooklyn woman.”
It tells the story of an idealistic young New York City public attorney who, dissatisfied with the system and seeing signs of the cosmos all around him, decides to rob one of his clients of a multimillion-dollar narcotics deal. Olivia plays the only female among a group of men in the film.
Is Olivia Cooke in a Relationship?
Despite being a celebrity in the public eye, Olivia has always tried to keep her private life private. At the time, she appears to be single.
Rumor has it that Christopher Abbott and Olivia Cooke dated for a few years before calling it quits in 2020. The couple began dating in 2015, according to multiple publications. The couple hasn’t spoken publicly about their relationship yet.
Olivia and Christopher were frequently seen together at events such as award shows and movie premieres when they first started dating. It is currently unknown when the couple began dating.
A few years later, in 2019, the Daily Mail was able to obtain images of the two of them kissing. Many people assumed Olivia and Abbott had broken up because they didn’t appear to be together after that.
According to The Sun, their relationship “fizzled out” while they were under lockdown. “They’re at key points in their acting careers and just couldn’t make it work,” a source quoted in the newspaper said. Cooke mentioned the “big break-up” that occurred before her audition for House Of The Dragon in a brief interview with W magazine.
Prior to that, she was rumored to have had a romance with British actor Alex Roe. Roe was seen walking hand in hand with Olivia in August 2014, before he became famous in the movies.
The English couple was on their way to see “Arctic Monkeys” that evening. They have yet to confirm whether it was a date or a romantic relationship. The rumors fade away quickly.
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, she used Instagram as a dating app
Cooke told Square Mile that she joined Instagram during lockdown because she was “lonely and single at the time,” thinking she “could slide into someone’s DMs,” but that experiment failed because no one responded to her messages. Cooke joined Instagram solely for the purpose of dating.
Cooke began filming Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in 2014 as the lead actress Rachel Kushner, who was diagnosed with leukemia. She had the option of wearing a skullcap during the scenes in which the character underwent chemotherapy, but she chose to shave her head instead to be more authentic.
As a result, Cooke required a $10,000 wig for her role in Bates Motel, which Fox Searchlight Pictures covered. To portray someone suffering from such a dreadful illness, the English actress went above and beyond, even meeting with actual cancer patients at UCLA Children’s Hospital to understand their lives and experiences.
The film’s director, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, claims that Cooke shaving her head stimulated the set the next day while filming the sequences. Cooke’s risky decision appears to have paid off in the end, as the film won two top prizes at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Olivia Cooke’s Interesting Facts
- In 2014, she appeared in Bulgari advertisements to support Save the Children.
- Olivia worked hard to get into The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but was unsuccessful.
- She suffers from Cystic Fibrosis.
- She lacks a Twitter account.
- Cooke shaved her head to play the female lead with leukemia.
- She played a naked character in the film Naked Siggularity.
- She won the Best Actress Award at the Manchester Film Festival in 2017.
- Soft Voice and The Little Fish were both executive produced by Cooke.
