From Elizabeth to Lisbeth – Claire Foy’s transformation

Actor’s character in ‘The Girl In The Spider’s Web’ bears similarities to her portrayal of the UK monarch

LOS ANGELES: When director Fede Alvarez chose Claire Foy to star in the latest Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, he had no doubt the 34-year-old actor would easily transform herself into the intrepid cold-as-ice hacker Lisbeth Salander. After all, the British starlet has experience playing a fearless woman with ice running through her veins when needed – Queen Elizabeth II.

"I saw The Crown one day and I was like, 'That's it, this is all Lisbeth,' because as crazy as that sounds, there is so much in common with the challenges of playing someone like Lisbeth or Elizabeth," Alvarez revealed. Fresh off her Emmy-winning turn as the British monarch on Netflix's popular drama, Foy is tackling one of the heroines of modern crime fiction – Salander, a Swedish hacker – in The Girl In The Spider's Web.

The film, which opened yesterday in US theatres, follows Salander as she is hired to hack into a defense programme that can control the codes for the world's nuclear weapons. The role, previously played by Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara, represents a departure for Foy, allowing her to showcase a different, darker side. But the Uruguayan director says her regal role prepared her well.

"They are very similar characters," Alvarez said. "The Queen is never allowed to show she's angry or sad, always keeping a straight face in front of very different situations and Lisbeth doesn't allow herself to show her true emotions either. She’s seen pushing those emotions deep inside her."

Spider's Web is based on a novel by David Lagercrantz, who was chosen to continue the so-called Millennium series begun by the late Stieg Larsson. The film has been met with mixed reviews, with industry magazine Variety saying fans are likely to be disappointed with the way Salander is portrayed.

"The Girl in the Spider's Web is more vested in fiery external explosions than internal pain, reducing Salander to a quirky Batgirl-like figure, soft-pedaling her feminism, practically eliminating her queerness, and tossing in an American so the US can save the world," it said.

The Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation website, which gave the crime thriller a 64% rating, said the critics' consensus was that the movie "distills the action elements of its source material for a less complex – yet still reasonably effective – franchise reboot."

Alvarez, who directed the 2016 hit thriller Don't Breathe, said that as with any novel, it was difficult to adapt Lagercrantz's work for the big screen and still remain faithful to the plot. "You have to sacrifice a lot of things, otherwise it would be an eight-hour movie," he said.

He said he used the screenplay written by Steven Knight and Jay Basu, and adapted it to make it more personal. "Basically it was really making it about secret and shame, always about the family, whatever the story. As big as it is, even if the stakes are the world, it always has to be about you, something very close to the main character," he said. "It's also about a sin, something they have committed and they have to atone for."

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