From playing Anne Boleyn to Queen Elizabeth II, many of award-winning actor Claire Foy’s most famous roles have taken her back in time. Now, she traces her own family’s history as she prepares to appear on Who Do You Think You Are? Here’s five things you might not know about the star…
1. Northern roots
Claire Foy was born in Stockport in 1984 and grew up in Manchester, Leeds and Buckinghamshire. She has extensive Irish ancestry on her mother’s side.
2. Stage school
Claire studied drama at Liverpool John Moores University before attending the Oxford School of Drama.
3. Treading the boards
Claire began her career on the stage, appearing in the plays DNA and The Miracle at the Royal National Theatre in 2008. In 2013 she played Lady Macbeth, opposite James McAvoy as Macbeth, in a production at the Trafalgar Studios.
4. Small screen star
Claire Foy’s most famous role is playing the young Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series The Crown, for which she twice won the Best Actress Emmy. Her other famous television roles include starring as the title character in Little Dorrit, as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall and as the scandal-ridden Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll in A Very British Scandal.
5. Movie madness
Claire Foy has also appeared in films including the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man - for which she received BAFTA and Golden Globe Best Supporting Actress nominations for playing Neil Armstrong’s wife Janet Shearon – the crime thriller The Girl in the Spider’s Web and the Oscar-winning drama Women Talking.
Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
