Claire Foy



Claire Foy (born 16 April 1984) is an English actress, best known for playing the title role in the BBC One production of Little Dorrit, Anna in the 2011 film Season of the Witch, Erin Matthews in the Channel 4 series The Promise, and Anne Boleyn in BBC2's Wolf Hall. She also starred in the NBC series Crossbones as Kate Balfour. She portrays a young Elizabeth II in the Netflix series The Crown.

Personal life
Foy was born in Stockport, and she grew up in Manchester and Leeds, the youngest of three children. Her family later moved to Longwick, Buckinghamshire for her father's job, a salesman for Rank Xerox. Her parents divorced when she was aged eight. She attended Aylesbury High School, a girls' grammar school, from the age of twelve; she then attended Liverpool John Moores University, studying drama and screen studies. She also trained in a one-year course at the Oxford School of Drama. She graduated in 2007 and moved to Peckham to share a house "with five friends from drama school". She married actor Stephen Campbell Moore in December 2014. She gave birth to her first child in February 2015.

Career
While at the Oxford School of Drama, Foy appeared in the plays Top Girls, Watership Down, Easy Virtue and Touched. After appearing on television, she made her professional stage debut in DNA and The Miracle, two of a trio of one acts directed by Paul Miller at the Royal National Theatre in London; the other one act was Baby Girl. She starred as the main protagonist Amy Dorrit in BBC mini-series Little Dorrit, and was nominated for an RTS Award. She went on to appear in TV movie Going Postal and in the Medieval adventure film Season of the Witch alongside Nicolas Cage. She also starred in the BBC revival of Upstairs Downstairs as Lady Persephone. Foy co-starred in the Channel 4 mini-series The Promise, broadcast in February 2011, which she described in an interview at the time as her "favourite job ever". She played a lead role of Helen in the TV movie The Night Watch, which was based on a Sarah Waters novel. She returned to the stage in February 2013 as Lady Macbeth, alongside James McAvoy in the title role, in Macbeth at the Trafalgar Studios. In 2015 she played Queen Anne Boleyn in the six part drama series, Wolf Hall. Starring opposite Mark Rylance and Damien Lewis, Foy's performance of the doomed Queen was met with unanimous praise, with some critics comparing her to Geneviève Bujold's iconic performance in Anne of the Thousand Days. The Guardian called her portrayal of Anne "chilling, poised and perfectly complex". Foy would go on to be nominated for the 2016 British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.