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Claire Foy: ‘My anxiety was a tool to survive’

She has just won an Emmy for her role in The Crown and now takes the lead in two Oscar-tipped films. So why doesn’t the British actor believe her own hype?

Claire Foy has the heebie-jeebies. The actor, who until last year played a young Elizabeth II in the Netflix drama The Crown, has spent the last few hours being photographed in a studio in London. It’s a nondescript building that sits between a janitorial supply store and a tinned tomato factory, but the place carries very distinct memories. “It’s where I did my main audition for The Crown,” Foy says, shuddering. “I was five months pregnant. They put me in a wig and – oh God – a wedding dress. I had really bad carpal tunnel, and a swollen nose, and my lips were just massive. I had to flirt with Winston Churchill. I remember thinking, ‘I’m not sure this is gonna go my way...’”

We flee the weird associations to a pub not far away, where Foy, who’s been off caffeine for a couple of months, makes do with a long, pained sniff of my coffee and orders a soda water. She landed the main part in The Crown in 2014, and went on to appear in its first two series, winning a Golden Globe last year, and an Emmy this year. By arrangement, Foy and all her co-stars have surrendered their roles (Olivia Colman and others are currently on set as the Windsors, a little older) and this has freed up Foy to turn to movies. She has a couple of huge ones due: a moody, Oscar-y biopic about Neil Armstrong, First Man, in which Foy plays opposite Ryan Gosling as the spaceman’s wife; and then a noisier blockbuster, with Foy shorn and dragon-tattooed as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl In The Spider’s Web. She shot both films consecutively, Christmas through to spring, and hasn’t taken another job since, in order to spend the summer with her daughter.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OZzzIX
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