Olivia Haigh Williams was born on July 26, 1968, in Camden Town, London. The daughter of two lawyers, Olivia didn't give much thought to a career in acting during her formative years. But after receiving a degree in English from Cambridge, Olivia found that something was drawing her to the world of performance and immediately signed herself up for drama classes at London's legendary Bristol Old Vic.
After deciding to devote herself to acting full time, she decided to take a pragmatic approach and gave herself only until the age of 30 to turn her passion into a bona fide career. Olivia's early days as a fledgling actress were fraught with hard work and low-paying gigs, primarily on the London stage. She spent time with various troupes, including the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company and South Bank's Royal National Theatre.
It didn't take long for Williams to begin landing gigs on various made-for-British-TV productions, including a small role opposite Kate Beckinsale and Samantha Morton in an ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. But everything changed once she landed a much-coveted role in Kevin Costner's 1997 follow-up to Dances with Wolves, The Postman. Though the film bombed at the box office, Olivia emerged from the production a full-fledged star and quickly found herself a hot commodity in Hollywood.
After Olivia's experience within the world of a big-budget Hollywood epic, Olivia decided to try her hand at a couple of decidedly smaller productions. 1998's Rushmore paired the actress with the legendary Bill Murray in a quirky film from director Wes Anderson that eventually went on to win a slew of awards and nominations. She followed that up with a memorable role in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense in 1999, in which she played the hapless wife of Bruce Willis' ghostly apparition.
She spent the next several years appearing in one small, independent movie after another, generally eschewing anything even resembling a high-profile production. Between 2000 and 2003, Olivia popped up in a whopping 11 films -- including "Dead Babies" (2000), "Lucky Break" (2001) and "Below" (2002). This actress can also be seen in "X-Men: The Last Stand" (2006).
Olivia's personal life, long a dead zone of bad dates and broken hearts, finally began to look up in 2003 following her marriage to fellow actor Rhashan Stone, and in 2004, she gave birth to their first child, daughter Esme Ruby.