PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW BROOKES/TRUNK ARCHIVE/ WWW.SNAPPERMEDIA.COM.
marieclaire.com.au 63Gossips should read little into this. Foy
makes up answers as she goes, testing what she
thinks. She makes invigorating company, often
appearing stunned by something she has just
said, then laughing at herself for saying it. “I
think Jude Law’s over there. Isn’t that exciting?”
she exclaims, beaming, at one point. “Or is it just
a man with a shaved head and glasses on?”
Dressed sensibly for winter, she arrives
in a red woolly hat that, when removed, reveals
a cropped Salander ’do. “Weirdly, Berlin is the
best city to have this haircut,” she says. “Every-
body has it. If I was at home, people would say,
‘Bit bold!’” And thus our chat winds, spending
so long discussing a rave event she went to for
parents and babies – “We’re all trying to hang
onto a semblance of life” – that eventually I
mention I should really start interviewing her.
“Oh God, don’t,” she says sharply. “What are
we supposed to be talking about?” A film she
made with Steven Soderbergh: Unsane. In it,
Foy plays the improbably named Sawyer Val-
entini, who is driven at work and on Tinder, but
stalked by a man who looks not unlike a pre-
grey Bill Bryson. Early on, she signs up for
“voluntary” confinement at a local
mental health facility and direct-
ed by anybody but Soderbergh,
starring anyone but a committed
Foy, the hokey horror that plays
out could be terrible. Oh, and it
was shot on an iPhone, in 10 days,
as the director likes experiments.
Foy says he called it a “student
film”, and both felt free making it.
The subject matter, though, is grim. Has
Foy experienced anything like the stalking
Valentini sufers? “Dear God, no,” she gasps. “I
was once burgled, and thinking about someone
in my house made me feel ill. Christ. Stalking is
the biggest violation.” She groans in agony at
the thought. “It’s like The Fall, isn’t it?” It’s a
topic that is, literally, too close to home. She
nods. “At least with The Texas Chainsaw Mas-
sacre, you rationalise, ‘I’m not sure some man’s
going to come with a machine to slice me up.’”
Touch wood. “People do!” she laughs, the sec-
ond word pitched high and long.
It has been an exceptional time for Foy, who
for years was best known for the title role in
a BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit. Later this
year, she will star as Janet Armstrong, Neil’s
wife, in First Man, an Oscar-bait movie about
the moon landing, starring Ryan Gosling as the
astronaut. With that, Unsane and The Girl in
the Spider’s Web, based on Stieg Larsson’s iconic
characters, 2018 is working hard to make an
earlier quote that she is “never going to be a film
star” seem very silly indeed.“Ridiculous!” she says, throwing her head
back. Thing is, she believed it. Partly, surely,
because she was so bloody-minded, in a busi-
ness that doesn’t like newbies with opinions,
and turned down much of what her US agents
ofered her. Films such as High School Musical
3 are “not going to happen!” she told them.
In addition to being choosy, she also
“actively avoided” Harvey Weinstein. “I knew
what he was like,” she tells me. “There was a real
element of ‘You have to kiss the ring’, but I was
like, ‘I’m not fucking doing that.’ No, ta. Gross.
Not going there at all. I would never work with
anyone I thought was a bit shady.” Now he has
gone, and here she is, a queen in Hollywood,
with a new team and a nascent, if massive,
movie career – all of it down to The Crown,
which started barely a year and a half ago.
The show – Netflix’s best – is the story of
Elizabeth (Foy) and Philip (Matt Smith) living
through eras of social upheaval. Foy’s involve-
ment ended in the recent second series. (Olivia
Colman now takes over as Her Majesty.) Many
ignored the program initially – “Royal Family,”
scofs a deadpanning Foy, with a snore – and its
success was due to excitable word
of mouth about its lavishness and
acting. It has, along with Harry
and Meghan, made the Windsors
cool among cynics.
Yet Foy’s grandparents were
working-class immigrant Irish,
who “worked themselves to the
bone”, while Foy herself was
always “very aware of money and
not having any”. She did telesales and pub work
and is not ... “posh in any way,” she interrupts.
So did she feel awkward boosting the highest
reaches of a British society that doesn’t exactly
encourage upward mobility?
“I’m not ashamed, as a British person, of
the Royal Family,” she says. “I don’t think any-
body should go, ‘They’re a twat because they’re
well-of.’ The world could do with everybody
realising everyone can have empathy. But it’s
easier to hate, I suppose.”T
his empathy is what won Foy her
Golden Globe, but it happened fast
and she was overwhelmed at the
awards, surrounded by fame she
didn’t feel part of. When I say Mariah Carey
mentioned her in a tweet, the actress bursts out
with another loud laugh, shakes her head and
says, “That’s weird.” Still, a couple of years into
this circus must make her feel more comfy? “I
don’t know. You just get more prepared, and
now I’m able to see the Globes as a lovely thing
that I don’t necessarily think is going to last.”“I knew what
Weinstein wa s
like. I was
like, ‘I’m not
doing that’”Self-deprecating and
honest, Foy is aware
of the instability of
her industry. “I don’t
necessarily think it’s
going to last,” she
says of her fame.