CLAIRE FOY

I've seen 'Pride and Prejudice' about 4,000 times. I'm not joking: I know every single line.

I've worked in supermarkets, put tags in baseball caps and provided security during Wimbledon, but I never thought acting would be something I'd be any good at, or make a living from.

I'm lucky I have a fast metabolism... my whole family does... everyone's got a lot of nervous energy so we burn it off.

Growing up, I was obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio.

If I was working nine to five, acting would be my hobby... I always feel like maybe I should do an Open University degree. But I'm never going to.

I wouldn't have been able to go to drama school when I was 19. I don't think I was even conscious of life... I was like a zombie. But when I finished uni' I just realised... just go and do it, stop being a knob.

I hate having to pose for photos. It's just so embarrassing. Everyone is expecting you to know what to do because you're an actor, but I haven't a clue.

I am always so envious of people who do whatever they want.

I love home, any home really - my mum's, and of course my own. I love eating food there and chilling in bed with a cup of tea.

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to bring Peter Morgan's Princess Elizabeth to life; she is a gift of a role and a challenge I am so grateful for - a young woman trying to navigate a path through an extraordinary situation.

With the royal family, you don't want to see them as people because it takes the sheen off. They're distant; you can idealize them. But there's room to have compassion for people and see them as human beings. Just because they're royalty, it doesn't mean they don't love or feel loss or feel pain.

I always like to do quite a lot of homework; I quite like to do the research. If I didn't do this, I think I would like to be a researcher.

I think I need to play somebody who expresses themselves and is able to communicate on a more open level, something really different.

I think you can't have the monarchy without the coronation. I think you would have to get rid of the whole kit and caboodle.

You never know what state you're going to be in after giving birth.

History has done a great disservice to Anne Boleyn.

If you're doing something that's period, you've got to live in it, and you've got to make it resonate with you.

The idea of your younger sibling being in pain and realizing you are the cause of that pain is unbearable.

I think we should all have a private audience with Helen Mirren.

As an actor, there's nothing worse than the sound of 'seven years'. I'm sure to some people it sounds amazing, but to us, it's, like, seven years of playing the same person.

I haven't really given much thought to the whole 'working mother' thing.

There is no first-hand account of what the Queen was saying or thinking, so my job as an actor is to interpret her circumstances.

I thought she was just the Queen and he was Prince Philip, and that was just who they were, without thinking about them as a mother or a father or daughter.

Being really likeable all the time is just not real life, so it's your duty to make a well-rounded character.

Any scene I've ever played where I've thought people who watch it had experienced something like that - for example, people who've had to deal with losing a parent - I want to do it as respectfully as possible for those people.