In cinemas this week: First Man star Claire Foy’s rise to success has been out of this world

CLAIRE Foy could identify with the woman she plays in her new movie.

She portrays Janet, Neil Armstrong’s wife, in First Man opposite Ryan Gosling.

Janet, who sadly died this summer, admitted she was overwhelmed by her sudden fame after Neil landed on the moon.

And Claire knows how that feels after the success of The Crown, in which she played the young Queen Elizabeth II, made her a household name.

“Janet didn’t ask to be the poster girl for American wives,” says mum-of-one Claire, 34.

“She didn’t know that by marrying a fighter pilot she’d suddenly be on the front cover of Time magazine.

“Up until The Crown, I’d been relatively unscathed by any of that. I’m still unscathed, because I’m still me.

“I’ve changed in a lot of ways but if I wasn’t an adult, or able to see the reality of the world, it would be a very scary place to live in.

“I think Janet found it more restrictive and confining, like being in a straitjacket.

“There’s a scene where she really gives it to Nasa. She says: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re going to the moon, which is the most important thing in the world. But he’s my husband, the father to my children. Has that entered your mind?’.

“But Janet knew who she was and what was happening. She had such a backbone of steel.

“Janet, who raised two boys pretty much on her own, supported her husband and she said amazing things in interviews.

“It got to a point where she was at home and she was also a swim instructor, and she said unless she was challenging herself every day, she felt she was wasting her life.

“So he was off doing his thing but she did her thing, and she didn’t just stay still at home, she got out and did things.

“And that’s possibly what attracted Neil to her, that she wasn’t like every other woman necessarily in that way of her generation, she had a belief in herself and saw things. She herself would have made a great astronaut.”

The film is directed by Damien Chazelle, who won an Oscar for La La Land, and Claire says: “Damien has a way of making something unique. People have seen the moon landing story before, they’ve seen films set in space, but he does it in such a way that means it’s something you’ve never seen before.

“And it’s a story full of heart, which is something people don’t associate with this story, which is interesting.

“It was like shooting two different films. I felt like I was in a really intimate domestic movie about a family, and then I saw the movie with all Ryan’s scenes in space and it was like, ‘Whoah!’.

“It’s massive and vast and so mind-bogglingly beautiful.

“Damien had seen some of the stuff I’d done but I hadn’t played a mid-western American, and it would’ve been a massive, massive leap of faith for him to go: ‘Sure! You’ve got the part!’ So I came to LA and read for it, and we went and met Ryan.

“It was one of those situations where it should be really weird, and you’re barely able to open your mouth because you’re in such awe, but I somehow managed to not embarrass myself — I probably did.”

First Man (15) is in cinemas from Friday October 12.