Olivia Wilde
Wilde was born in New York City. Her mother, Leslie Cockburn (née Redlich), is an American-born 60 Minutes producer and journalist. Her father, Andrew Myles Cockburn, a journalist, was born in London to British parents, and raised in Ireland; her uncles, Alexander Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, also worked as journalists.
Wilde’s older sister, Chloe Cockburn, is a civil rights attorney in New York; her aunt, Sarah Caudwell, was a writer, and her paternal grandfather, Claud Cockburn, was a novelist and journalist.
Wilde’s father’s upper-class British ancestors lived in several countries during the height of colonialism and the British Empire, including Peking (where her paternal grandfather was born), Calcutta, Bombay, Cairo, and Tasmania (one of her paternal great-great-grandfathers, Henry Arthur Blake, was Governor of Hong Kong).
Wilde’s father’s ancestors include abolitionist and Anglican minister James Ramsay, politician George Arbuthnot, lawyer, judge, and literary figure Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, Lord Provost of Edinburgh Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet, and Sir Thomas Osborne, 9th Baronet. Wilde’s ancestry consists of English, Scottish, Irish, and German; she is also of more distant Sephardi Jewish descent from a paternal ancestor, Ralph Bernal (1783–1854), a British Whig politician and actor.
View More Picture
Elite.
