Olivia Cooke

Olivia Kate Cooke (born 27 December 1993) is an English actress. She is known for her starring role as Emma Decody in the A&E drama thriller series Bates Motel (2013–2017) and as Becky Sharp in the period drama miniseries Vanity Fair (2018). She also starred in the horror film Ouija (2014), the comedy-drama film Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), the period horror mystery film The Limehouse Golem (2016), the thriller film Thoroughbreds (2017), the sci-fi film Ready Player One (2018), and the drama film Sound of Metal (2020). In her latest role, she plays Alicent Hightower in the HBO television series House of the Dragon (2022).

Olivia Kate Cooke[1] was born on 27 December 1993 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, to sales representative Lindsay Wilde and retired police officer John Cooke.[2][3][4] Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she and her sister lived with their mother.[5] She started acting when she was eight years old at the Oldham Theatre Workshop, an after-school drama programme in her hometown. She attended Royton and Crompton Academy and studied drama at Oldham Sixth Form College, leaving before the end of her A-levels to appear in the drama series Blackout.[3] She starred as Maria in a college production of West Side Story, and soon landed her first and last leading role for the Oldham Theatre Workshop in Prom: The Musical, a remake of Cinderella.[2][3] When she was 14, she secured her first local agent, who gained her commercial roles.[6] In 2012, she appeared in One Direction’s “Autumn Term” tour video as a student getting a piggyback ride from Harry Styles.[7] Although her agent discouraged her from enrolling in drama school because she was already getting acting work, she was keen on applying to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and made it to the final round of auditions, but was not accepted.