British actor Olivia Colman has shared her thoughts on the fluidity of gender, while promoting her upcoming film Jimpa.

In a recent interview with Them, the actor said that she has “always felt sort of nonbinary”, urging the media outlet immediately to not “make that a big sort of title!”

She continued: “I’ve never felt massively feminine in my being female. I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man. And he goes, ‘Yeah, I get that.’ So I do feel at home and at ease. I feel like I have a foot in various camps. I know many people who do.”

The multi-award-winning actor was discussing gender binaries, as it is a theme of her new film, Jimpa. The family drama blends reality and fiction in a fascinating way. It is based on Sophie Hyde, the film’s director, raising a non-binary child.

The child in Jimpa is played by Hyde’s real-life child, Aud Mason-Hyde. Colman plays the mother, Hannah, while Mason-Hyde’s character is called Frances. John Lithgow plays Jim, Frances’ grandfather, a HIV Positive gay man.

Jimpa tells the story of an entirely unconventional family. It came from Hyde’s dream of getting her father and child together to discuss their queer identities and activism.

Her father, an AIDS activist, died around the time her child was starting to come out and become involved in activism. “That was the impulse to make the film, to put them in a room together”, she said in the interview with Them.

Hyde speaks of intracommunity and believes in the importance of intergenerational relationships within the community. “I had a feeling that sometimes there are young queer people who have been able to find each other online [but] haven’t always had elders to be with,” she said.

Colman said that while she spends a lot of time with queer people, this was her first experience really spending time with trans people. The actor stated how she feels that gender binaries are problematic, and that while talking to Mason-Hyde and their community, she felt as though “suddenly I’m not an oddity”.

Jimpa premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month, the Adelaide Film Festival last year, and has not yet been released in Ireland.