Olivia Williams has long balanced her talent with a desire to tell it how it is – and she’s now feeling more frank than ever. The Dune star gets more than a few things off her chest, from the Hollywood patriarchy to AI and living with cancer

Since 2018, Olivia Williams has grown more blunt than she used to be. “I’m a bit less scared of the consequences of saying what I think,” she explains. The actor has never been particularly shy about speaking her mind, as a trawl through any of her old interviews, from the Rushmore days in the late 1990s to her more recent red carpet duties for The Crown , will reveal. But in the last few years, she has become less inhibited, for reasons we will get on to shortly. “Because how bad can it be?” she says, with a droll laugh. “You’re going to die, so it doesn’t matter.”

Williams has positioned herself on the furthest possible edge of an enormous sofa in a posh London hotel. Her parents were both barristers and she is very precise with words. “I’m really, really particular and I’m afraid I will be with you,” she says. This translates to a no-nonsense and crisply funny conversation – she leaves the impression that she does not suffer fools gladly. She hates being misquoted and still remembers, in the early 00s, when a journalist asked her how she felt about Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow taking theatre parts in London. Williams had said she didn’t care. She was in Hollywood at the time, playing American characters in American films. But the story came out differently: “Gwyneth muscling in on our roles.” In her retelling of it today, she calls the journalist a “fuckwit”, before adding, “I shouldn’t say that. I’m not being very guarded.”

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The actor on making a ‘cracker’ of a film with Cillian Murphy, the new female-led Dune TV series, and knowing when to give people the shark eyes

The British actor Emily Watson made one of the outstanding film debuts when she starred in Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves in 1996, aged 29. She was Oscar-nominated for that role, then again two years later for playing the cellist Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie . She is known for her fierce, fearless performances: she won a Bafta for her part as a social worker in Appropriate Adult , ITV’s 2011 Fred West drama, and received Emmy and Golden Globe nods for the Sky Atlantic miniseries Chernobyl . Watson is 57 and lives in south London with her husband and two children.

When you got an Oscar nomination for your first film, did you find it a lot to take in?
I was very, very green and I was just going where I was told. I don’t think I ever had an instinct for it; you either have or you haven’t. I think I’m good at what I do because I’m an idiot. You have to be a bit of an idiot to be an actor.

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But nothing has made me laugh more than the books he’s written

It is a lifelong discipline of mine to avoid this column defaulting to Kids Say the Darnedest Things, but I fear I must make an exception this week. My son is making inroads into comedy, now that he goes to bed clutching a book of jokes by Jamie Smart. These are the real, old-fashioned groaners of mythical archetype. (Sample: what do you call a bear with no ear? B!)

His joy at the wordplay is matched only by his seeming addiction to their grammar, causing him to take pleasure in jokes he can’t possibly understand. He does not, for example, know what a byte is, but seems delighted it’s something a crocodile has in common with a computer. Meaning, it seems, is less important than rhythm as he giggles himself to sleep each night.

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Anna Maxwell Martin and Shaun Evans grip in an edgy true crime drama; Eddie Redmayne’s suave lone assassin meets his match; Junior Taskmaster is a chip off the old block. Plus, sea bunnies with David Attenborough

Until I Kill You (ITV1) | ITVX
The Day of the Jackal ( Sky Atlantic / Now )
Junior Taskmaster (Channel 4) | channel4.com
Asia (BBC One) | iPlayer

We all know the drill with the majority of serial killer dramas. Dark night. Deserted street. Woman hurrying home. The obligatory shot of bare legs lying on grass as the body is found by a dog walker… check, check, check.

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Royal Academy; King’s Gallery, London
A trio of Renaissance masters look over each other’s shoulders in Florence 1504, while a parallel show of drawings from the Royal Collection gets to the very heart of their art

It’s 25 January 1504, and so cold in Florence that the Arno river is about to freeze over. Thirty men meet in an icy room to decide where to position a giant statue of a little hero somewhere outdoors in public view. Among them are Botticelli, Leonardo and Filippino Lippi, who will be dead only weeks later and has already had to concede a substantial commission to the more famous Leonardo, currently working on the Mona Lisa . The statue is Michelangelo’s David , and it will take four days to drag it, upright, to the most prominent square in the city.

Raphael arrives in Florence a few weeks later, possibly from Siena, at the age of 21. He sees the enormous figure, and he draws it. And looking at this nimble image in brown ink, now hanging in the Royal Academy’s small but potent exhibition , you see through Raphael’s eyes for a moment. He stands behind this most familiar of all statues, noticing the extreme musculature so strenuously recorded in Carrara marble; and he corrects it, ever so slightly, scaling down the outsize hands.

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President-elect completes clean sweep of seven battleground states; Republican representative defeats former Navajo Nation president for House seat

You can explore the US election results and maps below with our live tracker. It has breakdowns of votes by state here:

And the House, Senate and governor elections map and results can be found here:

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Many of us are convinced our insecurities are screaming out because we compare what we feel like on the inside to what other people look like on the outside

The question I grew up in a household that was supportive and well-meaning, but lacking in any affection or warmth. I know my parents love me in their own way and that they are funny and kind under the coldness.

I can demonstrate love and affection towards my own daughter, but I know I have inherited their traits in other ways. I have only a handful of people who I’m close to. I know my sense of humour and outlook can seem cold and sarcastic. I find small talk hard.

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New research from the US shows that poorer students living more than 30 miles from college are unlikely to continue with their studies

Too many people go to university is a popular argument. I disagree. Insofar as our economy does not create enough highly skilled jobs for the graduates we produce, the fault lies with our economy, not an “overeducated” workforce.

But let’s park that row about the volume of higher education and focus on its geography. MPs calling for fewer students never answer the next question: which university to close? They don’t suggest one in their constituency.

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All you need is the comfy socks to slip into first

As we are deeper into winter and the clocks have changed, I have thrown myself fully into cosy chocolate pursuits. I will scatter the column with Christmas ideas, too, in the coming weeks.

First up this week is Table ’s hot chocolate, £12.50/250g. All single origin and they come in flakes. (PSA: I use hot chocolate flakes in any recipe that asks for grated chocolate and it works brilliantly.) There are three in the collection, all award winners. I particularly liked, for something a bit different and warming, the Chai Spices, 59%. There’s cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, white pepper, cloves and star anise in there, and all you need are the comfy socks to slip into first. The 62% from the Dominican Republic is a more classic hot chocolate and the 63% from DR Congo has a hint of salt, which is very good in hot chocolate, even if the words salt and chocolate together make you feel fatigued.

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