UK Harper’s Bazaar December 2021/January 2022 : The 'Women of the Year' Issue

charles01 · Nov 2, 2021

Very pretty! I have no complaints, I like it

Frederic01 · Nov 2, 2021

Harpers Bazaar UK Instagram

caioherrero · Nov 2, 2021

Sarah cover is the best.

Horizontina · Nov 2, 2021

Lubomirski understood the assignment.

Frederic01 · Nov 2, 2021

Women of the Year Awards 2021: Claire Foy
Since stepping down from her throne on The Crown, actress Claire Foy has become Hollywood royalty, starting a quiet revolution to put the reality of women’s stories centre-stage

BY HELENA LEE / NOV 1, 2021

I first saw Claire Foy in a Greenwich pub over a decade ago. Wearing an emerald green dress and dancing abandon to Nineties rave classics, she was playing the supporting role of bridesmaid to her elder sister, my husband’s friend Gemma. We were aware she was a talented actress, as she’d already taken the lead in the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, but none of us, Foy included, could have guessed how successful she would become.

Since those carefree days, Foy has made her name with a succession of challenging parts. She brought a compelling vulnerability to the brittle haughtiness of Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall, before being signed to play another Queen – our own – in The Crown, Netflix’s most expensive production to date. Her restrained performance attracted rave reviews, two Emmys and a Golden Globe. Then Hollywood came calling, with lead roles in blockbusters such as The Girl in the Spider’s Web and indie films including Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane. When we speak, she is in Toronto, filming Women Talking, a dramatisation of Miriam Toews’ book about sexual abuse within a Mennonite colony. "It’s ridiculous!" says Foy, her blue eyes wide as she reels off the list of actors in the production: Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw... "Such an amazing cast!"

Indeed, if there’s anything that characterises Foy, it’s her humility, her refusal to play up to her own fame and status. People often assume that she is chilly and detached, but perhaps that’s a consequence of her willingness to subsume her personality into that of the characters she portrays, as much as her absence from social media and the endless party circuit (though as we know, she likes a dance as much as anybody...).

It stems, she believes, from her health problems experienced during her youth. In her late teens, Foy was diagnosed with a tumour in one eye, and had to undergo surgery while waiting to hear if it was cancerous. She also suffered from teenage arthritis, which periodically left her on crutches. "It’s not great to be 18 and have no right eye," she says, a little rueful. "You’re supposed to be launching yourself into the world, going: 'here I come... woohoo!' But it fundamentally changed me in the best way." In what way? "A lack of vanity; being able to do things I’d never now take for granted."

In the flesh, Foy is quick and witty, self-deprecating and expressive, pulling faces as she talks, her arms gesticulating widely. Today, her long hair is loose, and without make-up, her freckles stand out on her pale, luminous skin. She’s often not recognised when out and about, she says. "If anything, it would probably be quite helpful if people gave a sh*t," she laughs. "I’m sure I’d get more seats at restaurants! I should probably care more; I often think maybe me and my child shouldn’t be having a row in the middle of the street!"

Playing the Queen in The Crown brought her global attention, which may be why she moved on with relative ease, cheering on Olivia Colman, her successor to the throne. ("I loved it!" she says of Colman’s performance. "I wouldn’t have missed it!") As for projecting what the real Queen might be feeling this year, having lost her consort and facing yawning family rifts, Foy won’t be drawn in. "I’ve always played Peter [Morgan]’s fictionalised version of who he thought was the Queen. I knew I would have to have attachments and beliefs about who that character was, but what right have I got to assume any sort of connection to her or ownership of her?" She does add: "But they were married for such a long time, and there is something so beautiful about their commitment to one another."

It’s oppressively hot when we speak, and a hurricane is about to hit the east coast but, for now, she is safe within the white walls of the house she is renting with her six-year-old daughter, prior to her return to school in north London. We empathise with each other about working while having small children. "It’s interesting talking to those on this film with grown-up children about how they managed to navigate it," she says thoughtfully, cupping her chin in her hand. "And what it all boils down to is... that there is no way."

Foy is a veteran at negotiating the demands of her career with motherhood. She was five months pregnant when she auditioned for The Crown, and her daughter was four months old when filming began. On The Graham Norton Show, Foy’s co-star Matt Smith described hearing the bass-line beat of the breast pump each morning from her trailer. "It makes me sick thinking about it," she shakes her head in disbelief. "I would never have a four-month-old and do that again. I was grateful for everything that experience brought me. It completely changed my life in every single way. I don’t regret the decision, but... my God there were some very dark days. Awful days.

"The industry itself is fundamentally flawed," she goes on. "You’re working 14- to 16-hour days. One person always has to be at home, and that is conventionally the woman. In some countries, like France, women are paid a lump sum when they have a baby. It feels like in our society, there is this thing where everything falls on the woman. The guilt of it. The burden of it. It all seems too much."

It’s a subject we return to again and again: the difficulty of being a woman, of being a mother who works, of being in an industry that has traditionally supported the needs of men. These days, Foy tries to be easier on herself: "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,' she deadpans. "'This is the hand you’ve been dealt, let’s try to make the best of it.'" She erupts into laughter.

Love, she believes, comes with pain. "I have always found love very..." She struggles to find the word. "...overwhelming. Children just love you, even if you’re a monster. It’s such a big responsibility to be in charge of such an amazing thing and all you’re going to do is f*ck it up." She feels this especially keenly because she is no longer with her daughter’s father, the actor Stephen Campbell-Moore, the pair having separated three years ago. "So there are periods when she is with her dad and not with me. That is physically painful. Physically painful," she repeats emphatically. "It’s just hard."

Part of Foy’s mission as an actress is to portray the reality of women’s lives on screen. In her Critics’ Choice #SeeHer Award acceptance speech in 2019, given for her portrayal of Janet Armstrong, the wife of Neil, she said: "I can’t tell you how many times during the making of the movie... people said to me: 'well, that part is normally just the wife.' There is no such thing as just the wife." She went on to credit the director Damien Chazelle for realising that the depiction of Armstrong’s family and domestic situation was more interesting than any depiction of perfection could ever be.

And there it is: this thread of subversion through her every choice, a constant questioning, pushing, reframing the way the characters are drawn, and our reading of conventional roles. She is adamant that we should not be simply creating female characters in the mould of men. "It’s to underestimate the fact that women have, for centuries, been wives and mothers, and still are,’ she says. "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."

Last year, Benedict Cumberbatch texted Foy to tell her a part had come up in his new film, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, that would explore the life of the artist, known for his anthropomorphic cat drawings. She plays Emily Wain, whose partnership with Louis leads to an intense period of creativity for the artist.

Foy has been open about suffering from anxiety herself, and believes the portrayal destigmatises the conversation. (The film is written and directed by Will Sharpe, the award-winning creator of the television series Flowers, which he called a "comedy with mental
illness".) "Louis Wain’s struggle with mental health [he is thought to have had schizophrenia] takes over his life but doesn’t define him as a person," she says. "If someone just becomes their condition, it is very limiting. You don’t get to see the many other colours of a person. If you make it all about their schizophrenia, depression or anxiety, it’s quite reductive really."

Then in December, she takes on a rather different wifely role when BBC One airs A Very British Scandal, a three-episode mini-series that covers the extremely public divorce in 1963 of the Duchess of Argyll (played by Foy) from her second husband, and what became known as the ‘headless man’ scandal.

The story goes that the 11th Duke of Argyll hired a locksmith to gain access to his wife’s private papers, stealing a Polaroid in which she was naked except for her signature string of pearls, committing fellatio with a man who was not identified. At the time, the judge who granted the divorce pronounced that the duchess was "a completely promiscuous woman", and society agreed with him. The legal system prevented her from giving her side of the story without risking imprisonment. It has since been described as an early example of sl*t-shaming, revenge p*rn and celebrity hacking. Foy acknowledges the risk in bringing the affair to fresh light but feels that a reassessment of what happened is long overdue: "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," she says. "But, in that period it was difficult to get anyone to speak about their emotions; she created a mask." She admits that it was hard work to reach a point where she thought the audience could see a woman who enjoyed her own sexuality without shame being attached to it.

"I don’t know whether it will achieve that. Certain news outlets..." she says under her breath, "...might make it about her giving someone a blow job. And I’ll be like: 'It’s failed! It’s failed!'" She puts her head in her hands. There were many days on the production where Foy says she felt depressed, realising how little had changed. "But hopefully in the end, people will watch it and think that she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. That it was misogyny; the patriarchy squashing a woman’s right to be who she is, freely and openly."

Harpers Bazaar UK

axiomatic · Nov 2, 2021

On her cover, Claire Foy looks like a figure skater who just finished her routine

Benn98 · Nov 3, 2021

When did Succession become such a big hit? I find it so dull and contrived.
Erik's cover is gorgeous, the best imo. The others are good as well. Looks like Justine Picardie never really left.

aracic · Nov 3, 2021

UK Harper's Bazaar December 2021/January 2022

Women of the Year: Claire Foy

Photography: Erik Madigan Heck
Styling: Leith Clark
Hair: Ben Skervin
Makeup: Lisa Houghton
Cast: Claire Foy