From
Buckingham
Palace to the
gritty underbelly
of Berlin and the
dizzying heights
of NASA – The
Crown actress’
career has hit the
stratosphere. By
Jonathan Dean
A
bout an hour into a long
conversation in Berlin, the
subject of my chat with Claire
Foy turns to breastmilk. She
volunteers personal informa-
tion as if we’ve known each
other forever, using her incredibly flexible face
to run through emotions from surprised (big
blue eyes wide open) to appalled (scrunched-up
nose). There seems to be near-constant
baement at how her life has reached this
point, but with her career in hyperspace, and
having her daughter, Ivy, just turn three, it has
been a hectic couple of years.
What’s been the hardest part of that peri-
od? “It’s been physically quite hard,” she says.
“I’ve had to take care of myself after a baby and
working those hours, then feel bad about work-
ing, so [I’d] wake up early to see my child. Just
being a mess in every single place I was in.
“But everything is hard,” she continues,
more resilient than sad. “Everything is a chal-
lenge. You have a really amazing day, then an
‘armpit of the world’ day, but the next, you
know, you’re still here ... The thing I find hard is
that my child is continuously getting older. As
am I [she is 34]. And I really have to pay atten-
tion to where the time is going.”
Shortly after we meet, Foy and her hus-
band, actor Stephen Campbell Moore, release
a statement saying they have been separated
for a while. Foy is a very good actress, totally
convincing in her best roles as the taciturn
Elizabeth II in The Crown and the catty Anne
Boleyn in Wolf Hall (first screened in Australia
in 2015 on Foxtel) – it’s easy for her to pretend.
Also, maybe I’m an idiot who only thought a
lack of wedding ring was due to her being in
Germany to play the resolutely single Lisbeth
Salander in The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
Either way, with this breaking news, some
of our chat suddenly seemed staged, such as
when I asked whether Campbell Moore was
jealous of her career, like the Duke of Edin-
burgh was in The Crown as his wife achieved
a far greater profile than him. “I can’t speak for
anybody else,” she said, “but I’ve never been like
that, and there’s no way I could be in any part-
nership with anyone where that’s the case.”