AAA<\/p>\n
London, a tick after 8pm on a Friday, and Claire Foy, who famously played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, is \u2026 decidedly unregal. The woman with the patrician power to wear a tiara with the ease of a beanie has undone hair and no make-up, and looks like any other mum working late at home after a day of domesticity. \u201cI cleaned my oven,\u201d Foy says cheerfully. \u201cIt was disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since you ask, Foy \u201cwent bicarb\u201d, she says. \u201cIt did work. It just took about 18 hours for it to work.\u201d The kitchen chore was part of a spring-cleaning burst: \u201cLots of reorganising and chucking things out. I\u2019m feeling quite proactive. I\u2019m about to start media work again and have a small window between things, so I\u2019m making the most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Emmy and Golden Globes winner hasn\u2019t bothered with lighting wherever she is in her home for our Zoom call, so she\u2019s actually quite hard to make out. The lack of glamour feels authentic and, mixed with her talk of career, also the perfect advertisement for Foy\u2019s new project, The Magic Faraway Tree<\/a>.<\/p>\n The feature film is director Ben Gregor and Paddington 2 writer Simon Farnaby\u2019s take on Enid Blyton\u2019s beloved 1939-1951 series of novels, with Nicola Coughlan and Jennifer Saunders along for the ride. Foy plays Polly, a high-powered professional who burns out and moves her family from London to the English countryside where the kids find an enchanted forest peopled with fantastical beings.<\/p>\n That central tension \u2013 kids in meltdown over lost wi-fi who find life without screens is a pathway to adventure, curiosity and connection \u2013 is one Foy, 41, finds entirely relatable. Mum to daughter Ivy, 11, with her actor ex-husband Stephen Campbell Moore, she\u2019s called modern parenting \u201ca logistical shitshow\u201d and has a particularly \u201cvisceral\u201d hatred of social media.<\/p>\n So much so that Foy only tiptoed back into having any accounts during lockdown after deleting Facebook in the 2000s. \u201cAll I was doing was looking at ex boyfriends and people I went to school with, and knew instantly this is not good for someone like me,\u201d she says. \u201cI would be totally sucked in.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is why the star lauds Australia\u2019s ban on social media for under 16s as \u201ca cry for help from parents\u201d. She says, \u201cEverybody\u2019s like, \u2018Throw me a bone, I\u2019m trying to figure out how on earth to navigate this world that\u2019s moving so fast.\u2019 We seem to be hurtling into it without pausing to wonder where we want humanity to go.\u201d<\/p>\n All that conflicted, real-life experience of motherhood shaped how Foy approached Polly. \u201cIt\u2019s most people\u2019s experience that you struggle to do all things well all the time,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s only when Polly takes stock and goes, \u2018I\u2019m working so hard to not spend time with my kids and not feel fulfilled and I\u2019m just sort of on this hamster wheel,\u2019 that they choose to get off.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s just trying to do her best. Everybody is, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what kind of mum she is in real life, Foy smiles through the half-light. \u201cOh my god, I\u2019ve got no idea, don\u2019t ask me. I don\u2019t have a plan, I don\u2019t have a mission statement and I certainly don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen one day to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n Generations of kids grew up reading Blyton\u2019s Faraway Tree books and imagining the trippiness of characters Moon-Face and Silky and the giant tree with the vertigo-inducing ladder at the top. But Foy didn\u2019t read the books growing up, so she and Ivy listened together to the audio books.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would have been quite difficult to do had I come with the baggage of memory,\u201d she says. \u201cBooks have a very particular way of becoming really profound for you because they are your imagination as much as the author\u2019s, so I wasn\u2019t burdened by that.\u201d<\/p>\n Faraway Tree is her first children\u2019s movie, and the first Ivy will see her mum in. Why this movie and why now? \u201cIt was just such a nice thing to do something that felt very pure \u2013 the message is pure,\u201d she says, adding that it was also \u201cthe right time with the right people\u201d.<\/p>\n That includes Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man, The Social Network), who plays her character Polly\u2019s on-screen husband Tim. It\u2019s their second screen outing as a married couple after filming 2016 drama Breathe. Foy \u2013 coy about her reported real-life relationship with musician Charlie Cunningham, who she\u2019s been snapped with in London since 2023 \u2013 laughs when asked the secret to their movie chemistry.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she says. \u201cWe worked together quite a long time ago and that was a really bonding experience, quite intense.\u201d It\u2019s \u201ca lovely thing\u201d, she adds, \u201cwhen you get to work with someone again because at least you know they haven\u2019t been totally put off\u201d.<\/p>\n Foy\u2019s CV bristles with dramatic work: Women Talking, H is for Hawk, First Man. Now, suddenly she was on a set full of marshmallow trees, spaghetti fights and joyous chaos with three young co-stars who \u201cwere having the time of their lives\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cMy life has continued [after The Crown] but you are sort of freeze-framed in a period of time for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Claire Foy, actor<\/p>\n No wonder. The sets of the magical lands involved roller-skating disco elves, spells and \u201ctables and tables of giant gummy bears and marshmallow flowers\u201d in the Land of Goodies. \u201cI totally stole things,\u201d she says. \u201cWe still have these giant gummy bears but the sell-by date is in 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n That full-blown fantasy of movies is what first drew her to acting. The youngest of three children of a pharmaceuticals worker mother and a salesman father, Foy grew up in Manchester and Leeds in England\u2019s north before moving to the countryside after her parents divorced. She was drawn to old films \u2013 Calamity Jane, Breakfast at Tiffany\u2019s \u2013 and a teenage obsession with Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet cemented her interest in acting.<\/p>\n She studied drama and screen studies at a Liverpool university before training at the Oxford School of Drama. This led Foy to play Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit (2008) and a stream of other roles including Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall (2015), where a tight budget meant her execution stunt used a cast of Julianne Moore\u2019s head, left over from Children of Men.<\/p>\n In 2016 her role as the young Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown brought a slew of awards and global fame. A decade on, she\u2019s still \u201creally, really proud of it and proud I was in it\u201d and doesn\u2019t mind when people still bring it up as her crowning achievement.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot has happened to me in the years since I stopped shooting it,\u201d she says. \u201cMy life has continued but you are sort of freeze-framed in a period of time for a lot of people. I totally get it.\u201d Foy is non-committal about the actual royals: \u201cI played Elizabeth Mountbatten at a very particular period of time. Outside of that, I\u2019m not very knowledgeable.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years she\u2019s learned impressive skills from roles: falconry, horse riding, the precise art of royal deportment. Singing, however, is not on the list, despite Foy being word perfect on Rapper\u2019s Delight on Jimmy Fallon\u2019s show<\/a>. \u201cNo, there\u2019s never been a secret karaoke phase. Singing is a very exposing thing to do. You\u2019d have to be absolutely smashed to do that in front of a group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Ask what she\u2019d be doing if you turned up at her door on a day off and we\u2019re back almost where we started. \u201cI\u2019d be on my bloody phone!\u201d Foy says. \u201cStruggling to reply to anyone. I\u2019m terrible. Probably cleaning, and procrastinating, moving things from room to room with no visible sign of achievement. Maybe a bit of gardening.\u201d<\/p>\n Wardrobe tidying, too: \u201cThere\u2019s always too much in it so it gets out of control. There\u2019s no real method, it\u2019s cram everything in then things fall down the back of the drawers and I find them three months later.\u201d<\/p>\n The star takes a beat when asked which bit of her life now she\u2019d bottle forever. \u201cOh my goodness, being healthy and appreciative,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m just so, so lucky. Life is nothing if you\u2019re not healthy \u2013 so at this moment, being physically able to be in my body and breathe in and out and enjoy my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of turning 42 in mid-April, she says she has a responsibility to her body. \u201cTo listen to its cues and try and understand what it doesn\u2019t like or it does like,\u201d she says. \u201cThat means moving, being in my body, whether that\u2019s exercise or walking, dancing around and listening to music.\u201d Because her job calls on giving emotions a workout, when she\u2019s not working \u201cit\u2019s that thing of giving yourself a bit of an emotional break\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"Claire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d2c5768ac7bdd256112060ffdc34e9aed1028684.jpeg\")
Claire Foy says she\u2019s raising her 11-year-old daughter, Ivy, as best she can in a tumultuous world. \u201cI don\u2019t have a plan, I don\u2019t have a mission statement and I certainly don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen one day to the next.\u201d Erik Madigan\/Trunk Archive\/Snapper<\/p>\n![\"Claire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/b2002a56118f00570fe8327adbb5a497bee6785a.jpeg\")
Claire Foy as a young Elizabeth Mountbatten in The Crown.Netflix<\/p>\n
![\"Miranda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774738515_762_422960f5e1f5dd6fec3ef40a71266437d9cd385d.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n