‘It’s not related to anything at all logical’: Foy opens up about anxiety battle
ACTRESS Claire Foy has opened up about her battle with anxiety, saying it doesn’t have ‘to be based on anything extreme’. Speaking on Scandinavian talk show Skavlan, The Crown star, 34, said ‘anything can trigger it’ and that everything ‘involving your life is what causes one to have anxiety’.
She said: ‘You could have anxiety about whether you should have a potato or a hamburger for dinner.
‘That would be anxious for me. Is the potato the right choice? Is the burger the right choice?
‘That’s how anxiety works: it doesn’t have to be based on anything extreme. It’s definitely not rational.’
It comes after Claire, pictured, told The Guardian she has suffered from the disorder since a young age, but that it ‘exploded’ when she began acting.
Believing that she developed anxiety as ‘a tool to survive’ her childhood, after her parents separated when she was eight, she admitted that she used it to try to keep control so she could ‘feel safe’.
She elaborated: ‘When you have anxiety, you have anxiety about – I don’t know – crossing the road. The thing is, it’s not related to anything that would seem logical.’
Claire revealed that the disorder took its toll when she auditioned for The Crown, as well as when she was cast as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall.
The actress admitted that as she read the novel, her anxiety kicked in, making her believe that she wasn’t at all suited for the role because she wasn’t as ‘intelligent’ or ‘alluring’.
However, the star was praised by critics and viewers alike for her performance, and even received a Bafta nomination for the role. Claire also won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama for her role in The Crown, where she took the title role of Queen Elizabeth II.
She acted alongside Doctor Who star Matt Smith, who plays Prince Philip in the show, for two seasons.
Speaking to Net-a-Porter’s digital magazine PorterEdit about the pay gap between her and 35-year-old Smith, she said; ‘I was deeply hurt by [the pay gap], because I’d been working on that show for two years. I loved everybody on it.
‘And then I realised, there’s been a big, fat, dirty secret that nobody’s ever talked about. Then there was also that thing [of being] an inadvertent spokesperson. Why did it have to be me?’
She added: ‘You feel lucky to have a job. It’s so competitive. So, in that way, they rely on competitiveness and actors’ vulnerability to say, “They’ll accept it for 10 grand less.”
‘I could have said nothing. And I think everyone would have preferred that. But I thought, if I do that, I will be cheating myself and all the other women I know.’