Actress Laura Donnelly has won the award for Best Actress at this year’s Olivier Awards. Laura won the award for her role in Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman which she starred in at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre. The Ferryman itself is a play, so you won’t find it listed on IMDB!

The 35 year old was not the only one to win an award for this play as it also won Best Director, which was awarded to the writer Jez Butterworth, and Best New Play was awarded to the entire show.

  As for the ceremony itself, there were a few familiar faces that showed up including Shirley Henderson – best known for starring in the Harry Potter franchise as Moaning Myrtle and Bridget Jones’s Diary where she starred as Jude. Many of the award winners used their speeches as a way to honour the #MeToo movement and Time’s Up. Many of the attending stars even turned up with badges that were about Time’s Up itself.

Marianne Elliot, who is a 51 year old theatre director, spoke out during her speech saying, “[The industry] has got to take positive action in terms of getting more women into the business, getting more women into the creative teams, into leadership and management.” She then continued on saying, “We all have to do something about that, because there should be many more female directors out there.”

Another theatre director, Dominic Cooke, also spoke out. The 52 year old won an award for Best Musical Revival for his work in Follies and addressed the subject in his speech saying, “The truth is always progressive, so once the conversation about what has happened comes out, as difficult as it is, then we can start to move forward.”

Laura herself didn’t mention any such themes in her speech, which focused mainly on the fact that she was pregnant at the time of starring in the play and was thankful that she had help with holding her hair back. In other media, she finished starring in Outlander last year playing Jenny Fraser and has guest starred in 2 episodes of the TV series Britannia. Laura is also well known for guest starring on the TV show Merlin as the love interest of the titular character played by Colin Morgan.

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