Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3378
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Claire Foy works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Claire Foy appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Claire. All of Us Strangers is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Danny Boyle, Ben Gregor, Peter Glanz and others, Claire Foy helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
All of Us Strangers (2023) as Mum · Breathe (2017) as Diana Cavendish · H Is for Hawk (2025) as Helen Macdonald
Career snapshot
Ranked #3378 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2011–2027
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
All of Us Strangers
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Breathe
Most frequent director
Danny Boyle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Danny Boyle
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
6.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Unsane, First Man, The Girl in the Spider's Web — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.4
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Unsane, First Man, The Girl in the Spider's Web.
Most productive era
2020s
9 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.22 films | 5.97 films |
| Action | 6.03 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.32 films | 6.21 film |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 6.73 films |
| Crime | 6.21 film | 6.21 film |
| Romance | 7.41 film | 7.41 film |
| Horror | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as The Girl.
Highest rated performance
2017Breathe
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2025H Is for Hawk
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2027Ink
The current state of the argument, as Joyce Hopkirk.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
15 of 15 films
as Helen Macdonald
Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe
as Diana Cavendish
Directed by Andy Serkis
as Janet Shearon
Directed by Damien Chazelle
as Emily Wain
Directed by Will Sharpe
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Helen Macdonald
H Is for Hawk (2025)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Helen Macdonald gives Claire Foy a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Diana Cavendish
Breathe (2017)
Performance score7.7
Breathe asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Diana Cavendish is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mum
All of Us Strangers (2023)
Performance score7.5
All of Us Strangers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mum is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Janet Shearon
First Man (2018)
Performance score7.4
First Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Janet Shearon is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Helen Macdonald
Start here. H Is for Hawk is the clearest statement of what Claire Foy does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Claire at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Breathe (2017)
Keeps the drama register of H Is for Hawk but asks for a colder reading of it.
First Man (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Breathe but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)
Keeps the drama register of First Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
All of Us Strangers (2023)
Keeps the drama register of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mark Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Vampire Academy
Andy Serkis
Director
1 film together
Notably Breathe
Fede Álvarez
Director
1 film together
Notably The Girl in the Spider's Web
Damien Chazelle
Director
1 film together
Notably First Man
Matt Lipsey
Director
1 film together
Notably Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for Christmas
Will Sharpe
Director
1 film together
Notably The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Sarah Polley
Director
1 film together
Notably Women Talking
Andrew Haigh
Director
1 film together
Notably All of Us Strangers
Philippa Lowthorpe
Director
1 film together
Notably H Is for Hawk
Peter Glanz
Director
1 film together
Notably Savage House
Ben Gregor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Magic Faraway Tree
Danny Boyle
Director
1 film together
Notably Ink
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Andrew Haigh
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All of Us StrangersAndy Serkis
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BreathePhilippa Lowthorpe
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
H Is for HawkDamien Chazelle
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
First ManWill Sharpe
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Electrical Life of Louis WainPeter Glanz
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Savage HouseSarah Polley
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Women TalkingMatt Lipsey
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for ChristmasMark Waters
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Vampire AcademyBen Gregor
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Magic Faraway TreeFede Álvarez
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Girl in the Spider's WebDanny Boyle
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
InkSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Breathe
as Diana Cavendish
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All of Us Strangers
as Mum
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Breathe
as Diana Cavendish
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for Christmas
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
H Is for Hawk
as Helen Macdonald
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Claire Foy has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
All of Us Strangers
as Mum
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Unsane
as Sawyer Valentini
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
All of Us Strangers
as Mum
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Magic Faraway Tree
as Polly Thompson
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
All of Us Strangers
as Mum
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Season of the Witch
as The Girl
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
as Emily Wain
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Savage House
as Lady Savage
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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