For Claire Foy, balancing motherhood and a career requires collaborative teamwork.
On Thursday, PEOPLE confirmed that the Crown star — she played the role of Queen Elizabeth on the Netflix drama — and her husband of four years, actor Stephen Campbell Moore, had separated.
“We can confirm that we have separated and have been for some time,” the couple said in a joint statement obtained by PEOPLE. “We do however continue as great friends with the utmost respect for one another. We ask for our privacy during this time.”
Months before she confirmed her split, Foy, 33, opened up about how she and Campbell Moore co-parent their now 2-year-old daughter, whom they welcomed in 2015.
When Foy first auditioned for The Crown, she was five month pregnant, and started filming four months after giving birth. Despite her demanding filming schedule, Foy was able to breastfeed the newborn on set.
“In what profession am I allowed to have a child, breastfeed my child on set and have them say, ‘It’s great. Good for you. You are working and you have a baby’? ” she said in her emmy magazine cover interview, which was released Nov. 21. “I was very, very fortunate they supported me in doing that.”
Nowadays, Foy and Campbell Moore — whom she met on a job — try to balance acting with parenting and alternate the child-minding while the other is on set.
“I can’t imagine anything worse than being away from my child for six months,” said Foy. “I couldn’t.”
“You get to the point where you go, ‘I’m really sorry that you feel like that and I really appreciate what you feel and I’m really sorry that Mommy had to go to work,’ ” she shared.
“But there’s an equality and an understanding that both Mommy and Daddy go to work, and we take turns and we share,” added Foy.
Though Foy’s turn as the young queen has come to an end — the plan was always for her to play Elizabeth for two seasons, and Netflix has tapped British actress Olivia Colman for the show’s third and fourth seasons, playing Elizabeth a decade later — it won’t be long before audiences see her in front of the screen once again.
Foy is now preparing for her role in First Man as Janet Armstrong, the wife of Neal Armstrong (Ryan Gosling). She will also play Lisbeth Salander in the upcoming The Girl in the Spider’s Web.