64 marieclaire.com.auAbove: Director Steven
Soderbergh, Foy and
Joshua Leonard at the
Unsane premiere in Berlin
in February this year.
The film was shot on
an iPhone over 10 days.Clockwise from
top left: Foy, in the
thriller Unsane; and
playing the Queen in
the wildly successful
Netflix series, The
Crown. With now-
estranged husband
Stephen Campbell
Moore in 2013.PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW BROOKES/TRUNK ARCHIVE/SNAPPER MEDIA; GETTY IMAGES. SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE/NEWS LICENSING.She surely doesn’t think that? “Well,
I know how fickle the industry is,” she says.
“Everybody does! I am lucky I have done one
job in my lifetime that has been watched by
an audience, and by people I admire. All I can
do now is completely fuck that up.”W
hich brings us to Lisbeth
Salander. “She’s like James
Bond, if James Bond were
a woman,” Foy says, which
immediately starts the push for her to play
a female 007. But that isn’t the headline here.
Salander is a leather-wearing vengeful angel,
into S&M and fluid sexuality. The Queen is –
well, let’s wait until series three of The Crown,
but probably none of those. Surely this is just
a blatant attempt not to be typecast? “I’m an
idiot,” Foy says, smiling. “And I realise that,
with Lisbeth, I’m pushing myself to the abso-
lute edge of my ability. It’s slightly alarming.”
Someone once told her that after doing
a well-known part such as Doctor Who or the
Queen, you yourself don’t change, but every-
one’s opinion of you has changed forever.
“And that’s the fucked-up thing,” Foy
says. “Suddenly, you’re at a wedding and your
friend’s family are taking a picture of you.
Everyone around goes, ‘You’re worth some-
thing,’ and you don’t completely understand
what that is, because you’re still you.”
Her daughter was with her in Berlin, and
conversation often returns to her. She sees her
every day and has had family there, too, to try
to keep everything normal. This is a rare posi-
tion in film, which has a less-than-perfect
record of childcare provision, but from The
Crown on, when Foy breastfed dressed as our
monarch, the actress seemed to have forged
a position of power on set; though recent ad-
missions that her co-star Smith was paid
more than her may suggest otherwise. (Foy
was yet to comment on the pay gap at thetime of publication.) However, getting back
to work so soon after giving birth was some-
thing she says every woman deserves.
“When a woman gets to child-bearing
age, she has to disappear or not have children
and then be judged – it’s really weird,” she
says, face scrunched. “Women find it incredi-
bly diicult to go back to work after children.
It’s not encouraged. It’s just not the norm.
“I have decided that I don’t want to bring
up my child in the same world I was brought
up in and, therefore, I need to change how
I think about things.” When asked how, she
says that, before, she was scared of hurting
feelings, too worried about people liking
her. “It’s a long process to unravel,” she con-
tinues. “It’s 34 years of stuf you haven’t
really thought about. But I’ve never been in a
position where me being anywhere is helpful
at all, and I’ve realised that now I am.”
A burgeoning spokesperson, then – she is
set to be the patron of a rape crisis charity –
and the start, perhaps, of something wider, as
yet undefined. In person, as crass as this
sounds, she exudes the simmering passion
she does on-screen, a furious, human panic
that knows answers are around the corner
but, as yet, just out of reach.
And it was about here that we started to
talk about breastfeeding. Her sister and
friends gave her advice when she was strug-
gling. “I’ve realised, in the past two years, that
my friends have become the people ...” It’s a
rare time she dithers for words. “I feel so
accepted by them, and women need that
more. Less judgement. Less people having a
go. Being able to say ‘I feel shit’, and everyone
going, ‘That’s alright.’ It’s such a relief to real-
ise everyone else is finding it just as hard. Life
is hard.” She is smiling as she says that, and I
don’t think it’s a rictus grin, like the familiar
one the Queen often had to do.
Unsane is in cinemas on April 25.INTERVIEW