Crown actor sheds her regal demeanour on a rocket

When Claire Foy was cast in the TV series The Crown, portraying a young Queen Elizabeth, she realised she would forever be linked to the role.

But the 34-year-old English actor has shed all traces of regal demeanour in her two new films.

In The Girl in the Spider’s Web, an extension of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, Foy becomes the third actor to portray ferocious Swedish goth vigilante Lisbeth Salander. In First Man, she changes gears to play Janet Armstrong, the wife of American astronaut and moon walker Neil Armstrong, played by Ryan Gosling.

In person, Foy is clearly excited about finally being able to visit Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, after missing out when other cast members came to research their First Man roles.

‘‘I was in the ‘other’ movie, the one where Neil Armstrong was at home,’’ Foy jokes, ‘‘so I was excited when I heard we were doing publicity here.’’

She has been on her own rocket ride since wrapping her second season of The Crown in late 2017 and handing over the tiara to Olivia Colman because producers planned to skip a decade in the monarch’s reign. However, Foy insists her new film roles are not part of any strategic plan.

‘‘It’s very rare that you are given the opportunity to stretch your legs as an actor, especially to play someone who is so far beyond the reaches of myself, so I feel incredibly grateful I had that chance,’’ she says. ‘‘But if you actively try to do something because it’s the opposite of something else, you are going to make a terrible mistake.’’

First Man focuses on Armstrong in the 10 years leading up to the historic 1969 Apollo 11 flight and moonwalk. Based on a book by James R Hansen, the film explores the triumphs and the sacrifices made by Armstrong, the other astronauts, and their families.

Foy was honoured that Janet and Neil Armstrong’s two sons, Rick and Mark, offered to share details about their parents that ran the gamut from what cereal they ate for breakfast to how she tucked them in at night.

‘‘They were incredibly generous, sharing so much of their mum with me, and if I talk about it too much I’ll start bawling.’’

The youngest of three children, Foy was born in Stockport, near Manchester, and grew up in Buckinghamshire. She enjoyed drama in her early years but by the time she was 11 she was gravitating more towards sports. At 13, however, she was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis and could no longer participate in athletic activities.

Five years later, a tumour was discovered behind her eye, but it was benign and treated successfully with surgery and steroids.

After making up her mind, and training at the Oxford School of Drama, Foy made her professional debut at the Royal National Theatre in London. A steady string of credits followed, including the 2008 BBC miniseries Little Dorrit, her movie debut opposite Nicolas Cage in Season of the Witch in 2011, and the 2015 miniseries Wolf Hall, which earned her a Bafta nomination.

Throughout her career, Foy has played deeply complex characters but she bristles at the suggestion they can all be labelled ‘‘strong women’’.

I think we know we are all strong but we’re just crying out to see women on screen at all.