Actress Amanda Harris, who is currently rehearsing as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, is honoured to have earned an Olivier Award - despite it sporting a pink bikini. Steve Pratt reports.

THE last time Amanda Harris saw Laurence Olivier he was wearing a pink bikini. And in case you're alarmed at the image of the late great actor attired in ladies' swimwear, let me point out that we're talking about a bust of him, one of those handed out annually to winners of the theatrical Olivier Award.

This particular Olivier belongs to Amanda Harris, winner of the best supporting actress award last year for her performance as Emilia in a production of Shakespeare's Othello. She was surprised to win as she was up against Judi Dench.

Her Olivier is, she says, "very heavy" and kept at her club, or rather her boyfriend's club - the Colony Room, the famous Soho watering hole frequented by artists such as Francis Bacon. The Olivier has joined its eccentric art collection.

"It lives on a shelf there. We dress him up now and then. Last week he had a pink bikini on," reveals Harris.

She's been working with the RSC on and off for some time. "If you add up each season I've done about ten years," she says.

Cheek By Jowl director Declan Donnellan gave Harris her first job there, as Desdemona in Othello. She has, she asserts, "been a very lucky and grateful woman as I've always worked with great directors and working with the RSC you get to work with the best".

"I've never carried a spear or been an understudy. I like to think of myself as a team member." She'd already started rehearsing for Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream when she collected her Olivier, so she can't as yet point to any direct benefits from the win.

"People forget quite easily. But it does boost your level in the business and you get paid a little more in your next job. It was a great thing to win. I always treat it with the reverence it deserves," she says.

She's appeared in an RSC Dream production before. One of her first jobs with the company was as Hermia when Janet McTeer was playing Titania. "So I've worked my way up through the ranks," she says.

She's sad that another Stratford production, As You Like It, in which she plays Celia, isn't travelling to Newcastle as it's been such a hit. The production coincided with a staging in London's West End in which Sienna Miller, Jude Law's on-off partner, played Celia. Harris slaps down any talk of comparisons with the comment, "Stop it, it's not about that".

She's more than pleased with Greg Doran's production of the Dream, which she thinks identifies what Titania and Oberon's king of the fairies are arguing about and is also very magical. "The fairies have wings, I fly up and down, there's a proper asses head. We're a very happy bunch, it's a joy to perform in," she says.

"Greg was walking past the theatre one day and heard all this laughter coming from inside and said, 'what's going on?'. He didn't realise it was his production."

As Titania, she gets to wear a costume consisting of little more than a revealing, see-through negligee. "She's not called Titania for nothing," she adds with a grin.