Foy on Catch-22 for female stars

THE Crown star Claire Foy has complained that women are ‘judged’ if they do not have children – and face incredible difficulty returning to work if they do start a family. The 33-year-old, left, who plays Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in the hit Netflix drama, said she had insisted on having her baby daughter on set while filming so she could breastfeed her between takes. ‘When a woman gets to childbearing age, she has to disappear or not have children and then be judged – it’s really weird. Women find it incredibly difficult to go back to work after children,’ she said. ‘It’s not encouraged... It’s just not the norm.’ Claire auditioned for The Crown when she was five months’ pregnant. Filming started four months after she gave birth, and she brought Ivy Rose – now two – on to set to breastfeed. The actress admitted she was ‘very fortunate [the production] supported me in doing that’. But Claire – who recently separated from her husband of three years, Stephen Campbell Moore – told The Sunday Times that juggling her flourishing career with motherhood had been ‘physically quite hard’.