Olivia Colman said she has a secret tattoo tribute to her husband, screenwriter Ed Sinclair, but joked the inking "looks terrible" during an appearance on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast on Tuesday.

The 51-year-old actor lifted her sleeve to show writing on her right forearm and said, "I do have his name," adding, "It's a bit like he's p****d on me, but it was my choice."

Colman, who won the Academy Award for best actress in 2018 for The Favourite, said the tattoo is one of only two known inkings on her body. The other was given to her by co-star Dakota Johnson after a cast party in New York about four years ago; Colman has said Johnson used a stick-and-poke kit to apply the initials of her loved ones to her left arm.

During the interview, Colman reflected on the longevity of her marriage to Sinclair, whom she married in 2001 after seven years of dating. "We're not big fighters, which apparently isn't very healthy," she said, adding that the couple have learned "to sometimes, if that was annoying, just wait," and then raise the issue when emotions have cooled. "I think it's much better to wait until the calmer moments to go, 'Can we talk about that moment? I did find that a little weird...'

The couple, who Colman said have been together for 31 years and will mark their 25th wedding anniversary next year, have three children: Finn, 20; Hall, 18; and a 10-year-old daughter. Colman called Sinclair her best friend and said she is still physically attracted to him. "He's my best friend and I fancy him, which is quite nice," she said.

Sinclair worked as an actor before becoming a writer and producer. He wrote the 2021 Sky series Landscapers, which starred Colman and David Thewlis, and recently produced The Roses, starring Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as a couple at war. Colman said the pair "worked out very early on that it's much better if he's a writer, I'm an actor and we don't talk about it. It's much easier not to talk about the work."

The couple met in the late 1990s while rehearsing a Cambridge Footlights production of Alan Ayckbourn's Table Manners; at the time Colman was studying teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge. Recalling the first time she saw Sinclair, she said she experienced what she called "proper thunderbolts," describing his left profile and a moment when she thought, "oh my God, I'm going to marry him." Colman added that Sinclair does not recall that first encounter.

Colman's remarks on the podcast combined personal anecdotes and humor while underscoring how the couple approaches disagreements and supports one another. Her account of the tattoos added a light-hearted detail to a broader conversation about a long marriage shared between two people who both work in film and television.