‘Empire of Light’: What Is the Age Difference Between Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward in Real Life?
Released in the U.S. on December 9, Empire of Light is offering movie fans a love story for this holiday season. The two main leads, played by Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward, have also attracted attention for their age difference. So how old are Colman and Ward in real life?
‘Empire of Light’ is a romantic drama set in ’80s England
Empire of Light takes place in a seaside town in England in the 1980s. It revolves around a movie theater named Empire and the people working in it.
Hillary (Colman) is Empire’s duty manager who struggles with a mental illness. She oversees a group of employees, including a young man named Stephen (Ward). Soon, Hillary and Stephen develop a friendship and, eventually, a romantic relationship.
In addition to mental illness, the film also explores racism in the United Kingdom at the time and how Ward’s character deals with it.
Ward explained about one particular scene in which Stephen encounters racism from a customer (via Entertainment Weekly): “That scene was quite traumatic to film, really. It became less about acting, and it became real. I wanted to deliver a really authentic performance, so Black people that walked in that time can say, ‘Yeah, these are real things that we used to go through.’”
What is the age difference between Olivia Colman and Michael Ward?
Colman was born on Jan. 30, 1974, which means she is 48 years old in 2022. Meanwhile, Ward was born on Nov. 18, 1997, and is 25. This makes the age difference between them 23 years.
Despite this, director Sam Mendes did not require a chemistry test from Colman and Ward. “People like me and Olivia show ourselves,” Ward told The Hollywood Reporter. “When I come to meet you, I don’t really put up a barrier, and you see how those [people] can just work together, and that’s pretty much how our characters are.”
Ward also told EW about the on-screen romance, “It’s a beautiful relationship to explore because it’s rare you get to see that with a young Black man and then an older white woman, especially when there’s an exchange of energies and love and lightness.”
Other leading couples with large age gaps
Age gaps are not that rare in Hollywood. Some box office hits of the last two decades have seen actors with large age differences paired together.
For example, in the 2014 Magic in the Moonlight, Colin Firth was 53, while his leading lady, Emma Stone, was 25. A year before, the movie Third Person came out, which saw 61-year-old Liam Neeson paired with a 29-year-old Olivia Wilde.
A famous age-gap relationship from a 2000s movie is between Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, who were 17 and 51, respectively.
