Claire Foy is a British actress, best known for playing the title role in the BBC’s big-budget costume drama Little Dorrit (2008).
Foy was born on 16th April 1984 in Stockport, England. She grew up in Manchester and Leeds. Her family later moved to Longwick, Buckinghamshire. She is half-Irish and the youngest of three children. Her father, David, is a sales director and her mother, Caroline, works for a pharmaceutical company.
In an interview, Foy has said ” I was always an attention seeker, I used to put on shows at home and rope in cousins.”
“When I was a little girl, I trained as a ballet dancer…. Then, when I was 13 I developed juvenile arthritis… [and] began thinking about acting, although I never really thought I could do it…. At school, Foy did a couple of shows. “But I was never the prettiest or the most talented girl. It was always an uphill struggle. I loved drama, but somehow I just thought everyone else was better than me. Then when I went to university, I realised you’ve just got to have the guts to go for it.”
Foy went to Aylesbury High School, a girls’ grammar school, from the age of twelve; she then attended Liverpool John Moores University, studying drama and screen studies. She also trained in a one year course at the Oxford School of Drama, graduating in 2007.
She currently lives in Peckham “with five friends from drama school.”
While at the Oxford School of Drama, Foy appeared in the plays Top Girls, Watership Down, Easy Virtue, and Touched. After appearing in two television roles (BBC’s Doctors and Being Human), Foy then made her professional stage debut as Jan in DNA by Dennis Kelly in rep with The Miracle by Lin Coghlan at the Royal National Theatre in London (2008).
She has recently finished filming Season of the Witch, in which she co-stars with Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, and the independent production Wreckers.
It seems like the sky’s the limit for this talented young actress.
