Claire Foy fears she'll scare off 'Women Speak' young stars

"I want them to know that they are not at the mercy of the system."

Claire Foy is a talented professional gamer. Over the years she has been a hit on screen and on stage, she has won two Emmys for her performance in The Crown and she has four BAFTA nominations, two for The Crown and one for "First Man," the other being "Wolf Hall," and now she's rightfully in the works again. With her performance in Sarah Polley's "Women Talking," she won another Season Dialogue Awards. Yet even with all of this accomplishment, she's reluctant to admit that she gave her young Talking Girl co-stars good advice. (Even if it's a live thing.) ^The film is based on Miriam Toews' best-selling novel about a group of women living in a secluded religious colony who must figure out how to cope A range of methods of sexual assault colonized people. Will they stay and pretend nothing happened? Will they stay and fight back? Or, will they ditch everything they've known for a better life elsewhere?

With the film now in select theaters and scheduled for nationwide release on Jan. 27, Foy took the time to watch an episode of Collider Ladies Night with us, revisiting her journey from drama school to "breaking" journey Exit via The Crown" to be part of the illustrious ensemble in Women Talking.

Foy did reach a point where she could help forge a better path for newcomers such as her Women Talking co-stars Kate Hallett and Liv McNeil, both of whom debuted in this film. But, of course, there was a time when Foy herself was new to the craft and had a lot to learn. She recalls: ^Fortunately, that’s what drama school is for! Trial and error, finding The method that works best for you. Foy points to two particular ideas she picked up in drama school that have proven invaluable even today:

But of course, all the learning in the world can't quite make one People get ready to be a professional actress. When asked what Foy surprised her in her first professional scene, here's what Foy had to say:

“I think I went to drama school with very little understanding of what it would take to actually be an actor or what was involved or the skills you had to have, any of those things. Drama school, we did a lot of preparation for it. You did a lot of Stanislavski exercises, and a lot of prep around the skills that you might have to be able to do it. And then when I did my first play at drama school, I went, 'Oh, it was good. I liked doing it.’ I loved it. It was terrifying, and I was worried I was getting it wrong all the time, but at the same time, I was like, ‘This feels really, really, really good.’”

Foy has really honed her craft over the years , but there are always new lessons to be learned, whether in front of the camera or behind it. For example, watching an actor experience a "breakthrough opportunity" can mean one thing to movie and TV fans, but For someone who actually experienced it, it could mean something else. When asked about misconceptions about the reality of Hollywood's "breakout," Foy had this to say: - Stars. "I don't know how much I've been helping. I think I've basically been scaring them all the time." She went on to explain the specific advice she hopes to pass on to them, which is something special about studying in film and television, or any profession for that matter. Valuable lesson. She explained: ^Want to hear more from Foy on her impressive industry tour so far? Be sure to watch her Collider Ladies Night episode at the top of this article, or you can listen to the unabridged version of the conversation below as a podcast:

“I think one of the voice teachers at the school once said, ‘If you're on stage or you're acting in some way and you're feeling like it's not happening, just stop and take a breath. Just take a breath! You're probably not breathing,’ which is really important. But also for me, I fundamentally realized that acting genuinely was not about myself. It was about affecting another person, it was about the person you were acting with. How are you gonna make them change? How are you gonna make them see your point of view? You're always trying to get something out of somebody in life. Everyone’s trying to affect everybody in their life, whether it's other people or themselves. They're always trying to get a response or reaction or change someone and that is the most helpful thing to me in the world. I think a lot of the time as an actor you're meant to feel like it should all be about you or like the spotlight’s on you, and actually it's the opposite. If you just focus on the other person, then you just start doing it. You're just doing it. You're basically in the room listening and that's it.”

“I think the thing that I wasn't prepared for was there are technical elements to it, like it not being able to be all about the experience and the feeling. Sometimes it's about waiting for the light, and you've got to be ready to go when you have to go. Sometimes it's about saving yourself. You're doing everyone else's shots before your own, but you've got to get there. You've got to get there every time for the people that you're with and then for yourself.”

“I'd been working for like 10 years by the time I got The Crown, so I did feel a bit long in the tooth when it happened. [Laughs] I was a bit like, ‘So what?’ I had got to a point in my career where I was just like, ‘Well, that's not gonna happen for me.’ I mean, I don't know who that happens to. It was a pretty extraordinary experience. But I was very lucky that it wasn't at the beginning of my career. I was very lucky I wasn't overwhelmed by it or took it too seriously, basically. Or personally! So it was amazing, but I also very much had my own life and knew how to do my job by that point, so I was very lucky. This is another thing that Matt Smith actually told me. He already had it because he'd done Doctor Who and he said, ‘What I think is really interesting about it is that everybody thinks you've changed, but you've said exactly the same. It's just everyone's opinion of you has changed, you know? Everybody around you suddenly thinks of you differently and you think of yourself the same.’ I understand that that might be like, ‘That's not difficult,’ but there is something to navigate about that because you still have all the same opinions and insecurities or beliefs about yourself and then suddenly everybody else thinks of you now differently, that you apparently move through the world in a different way even though you still feel exactly the same. I think the thing is not to fight it. You can't control what other people think of you, ever, so you may as well just be in charge of your own life.”

“I wanted them to know that they were not at the mercy of the system. They were not at the mercy of this film. I just kept saying, ‘Look, a lot of us have been working quite a long time’ … [laughs] I was just not helpful at all. But I was just like, ‘Please don't feel like you have to sacrifice yourself personally for what you're doing. Don't take yourself to a place that you don't think you can come back from. Don't feel like you have to bleed for this. Yes, there is an element of that, but protect yourself. You're so young. Please don't hurt yourself. Please don't hurt yourself.’ And I didn't really have to worry about that because obviously, Sarah acted very young. I think she always had one eye on them. And also, they are just tough. I think my insecurity about it was probably completely unfounded because they're much more mature than I am now. So I don't really know how much help I was. And there was a therapist on set and everything, so I think for them, a first experience of making a movie like this, I hope all of their experiences are like this. I hope. And I really believe that they will go into their next jobs with an expectation of what a film could be like. I just hope it doesn't get ruined.”