Claire Foy was "jaded" and "at the end of my rope" before she took a three-year break from acting.
Claire Foy suffered burnout
'The Crown' star announced in January 2019 that she was taking a "completely self-indulgent" hiatus in order to spend quality time with her young daughter Ivy Rose, now six, whom she has with ex-husband Stephen Campbell Moore.
However, in a candid new interview with The Sunday Times, the 37-year-old star has admitted she suffered from serious burnout and was forced to turn down jobs because she was "exhausted".
She said: “It can get to a point where your body gives up.
“I couldn’t keep going job after job."
The 'First Man' star - who got divorced in 2018 - also suggested she and her fans would probably find it "boring" if she had carried on.
She confessed: "It was going to get boring.”
When asked who for, she replied: “Everybody! At some point, somebody will say, ‘We don’t care about you anymore.’
"And boring for me too — I was quite jaded. I turned down work and it’s not like I had s***loads of money. I was exhausted, at the end of my rope with lots of stuff and just went, ‘Goodbye! I can’t do this anymore.’”
Claire is firmly back in the game with a number of roles on the way, including the 2021 biographical film 'The Electrical Life of Louis Wain', in which she stars as the titular artist's wife, Emily Richardson-Wain.
And the two-time Emmy Award-winner - who shot to global prominence portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the first two seasons of the Netflix hit 'The Crown' - has admitted she is still not used to fame.
She said of being asked for selfies: “It’s not normal."
When asked if she has set up Google Alerts for her name, she said: "When I’m drunk I lookup reviews. But it’s the way of the Devil.”
And Claire joked that she gets "a shock" when she watches herself back on screen and notices how much she has aged.
When asked if she struggles to watch her movies and shows, she insisted: “Oh, I have no problem with that.
“Apart from now that I’m getting older ... Well, you’re watching yourself age on screen. It’s OK looking in a mirror because it’s incremental, but if you haven’t shot anything for years, you go, ‘Woah!’ It’s a shock.”
Tagged in Queen Elizabeth Claire Foy