Alison Oliver Avoids Question About Josh O’Connor Dating Speculation: ‘Try Not to Engage’

Alison Oliver has no interest in discussing her relationship status — and that includes those rumors linking her to Josh O’Connor.

“I just try not to engage with that and focus on being an actor,” Oliver, 28, told Elle UK in a profile published Friday, January 14, declining to speak further about her rumored romance with O’Connor, 35.

Oliver, however, did forecast that her 2026 would be full of special moments with her inner circle.

“I just want to make sure I’m nurturing relationships with all of the people I love, being kind, listening to people and just growing and staying curious,” she told the outlet. “Life is hard and busy, but I think those are the things that matter the most.”

Oliver and O’Connor first sparked dating speculation in 2024, after The Crown actor reportedly joined Oliver at her sister’s wedding in London. The following year, the pair posed together at the 2025 Cannes International Film Festival premiere of The Mastermind.

Months after Oliver and O’Connor’s supposed red carpet debut, the actress played coy about where they stood.

“I’m not going to answer questions about that, if that’s OK,” Oliver told The Times of London in a September 2025 interview. “I’m just setting a little rule for myself, but thank you. Your personal life is your personal life. I’m just choosing not to talk about that.”

According to Oliver, it is particularly difficult learning to navigate an onslaught of attention about her private life in the midst of her success.

“Essentially, with your job as an actor, you’re really not focusing on yourself, you’re focusing on this other character,” Oliver explained at the time. “It’s always a strange flip when suddenly you feel this spotlight on you and who you are. I remember in the beginning feeling really like, ‘Oh f***, I don’t actually know [who I am], so I don’t know who to be in these environments.’”

While speaking with Elle, Oliver reiterated that she has little interest in the fame aspect of her Hollywood career.

“That part is just not important,” Oliver stressed to the magazine. “I often don’t know why I have [social media] because my job is to make others believe I’m someone else.”

Oliver will next star as Isabella Linton in Emerald Fennell’s anticipated reimagining of Wuthering Heights.

“She’s a very repressed character who is desperate for love,” Oliver teased of the upcoming film. “Emerald’s interpretation of Isabella’s story is the reverse of Cathy’s; there’s an uncorseting of her. Like she becomes undone. There’s something so powerful about being underestimated.”

Fennell, 40, is best known for directing Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, recently turning her attention to adapting Emily Brontë’s bestselling novel.

“It’s how Emerald experienced the book when she read it as a teenager, so it’s not what’s on the page,” Oliver added of the new version of Wuthering Heights. “I don’t think that’s what it’s trying to be. You’ll never be bored by an Emerald Fennell film. I think it will make noise, but you never know how things are going to be taken. I’ve learnt that it’s not really my business to worry about that.”

Wuthering Heights, also starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, hits theaters February 13.