The Crown star Claire Foy has spoken about the “pressure” of motherhood ahead of her actress award win at the 2021 Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year ceremony.
The star, known for her Emmy-winning role playing Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, has a daughter, Ivy Rose, 6, with ex husband Stephen Campbell Moore.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar UK ahead of the awards on Tuesday night, she said she felt the pressure to be a “cake-baking, fun, 24-hours a day mother”.
Foy said: “There’s this pressure to be this cake-baking, fun, playing 24-hours a day mother, being some sort of vehicle for entertainment, love and food. I’m just prepared to apologise for who I am: ‘I am so sorry – but you’re lumped with me. This is the hand you’ve been dealt, let’s try to make the best of it’.”
The star, 37, also spoke about wanting to play mothers and wives in her work - as refusing to play a “supporting” part would be robbing them of their voice.
On never wanting to turn down a part of playing someone’s wife, Foy said: “It’s to underestimate the fact that women have, for centuries, been wives and mothers, and still are. That’s denying our entire history of what it means to be a woman. I’m interested in what she’s doing, what she thinks, what she believes.
“I don’t ever want to say I’m never playing a part that is supporting, or someone’s wife, because they exist, and if you can give them a voice, you should, instead of just making all these female characters that are basically just men but look like women – the superhero women who can fly, punch men in the face, that sort of stuff.”
Foy is about to appear in BBC series A Very British Scandal, which is about the notorious divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. Foy plays the latter - whose divorce was one of the most high-profile and brutal in 20th century history.
Foy said about the role: “The story can’t do what was done to her the first time around. If the audience judges her in the same way as before, we have defeated the purpose of what this is trying to do. This was a wealthy, privileged woman, pretty spoilt, by her own admission, and pretty questionable as a character. But, in that period it was difficult to get anyone to speak about their emotions; she created a mask.”
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Foy will receive the Actress award at the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards 2021 on Tuesday, held in partnership with Armani beauty.
The December issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK is on sale from 05 November.
