Claire Foy dives into darkness in The Girl In The Spider's Web

Following in the footsteps of Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara, Claire Foy takes over the role of vigilante hacker Lisbeth Salander in the new crime thriller The Girl In The Spider's Web.

It is based on the Swedish book of the same name by David Lagercrantz, who continued Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium book series after the latter's death in 2004.

Currently showing here, it is the sequel to David Fincher's Hollywood adaptation The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), which was headlined by Mara.

Rapace played the lead in all three original Swedish movies released in 2009 - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest.

QUEEN

An out-of-the-box choice was made by Hollywood producers to take Foy, the award-winning star of Netflix series The Crown who played Queen Elizabeth II, and put her in the black leather pants of the inked Salander in the latest iteration.

At our Skype interview at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, the 34-year-old English actress said the brooding, sullen Swedish character is not such a stretch for her.

Foy said: "I have a real understanding of why she has created this wall around herself, why she wants to be isolated and why she wants to be living on the fringes and be a shadow and be ignored.

"There is no safety for her in being seen. Whenever she has, it has led to horrific circumstances for her. She finds the world a dangerous place.

"But I also really identify with the fact that she, especially as a young girl, was very much told who she was, what she was, what she looked like, what her limitations are."

As a victim of emotional and sexual abuse, Salander is the protector of other women similarly wounded, and The Girl In The Spider's Web opens with her rescuing a young woman from a violent husband and wreaking humiliating revenge on him.

Icy Stockholm and Berlin are the main locations for the film, and the story kicks off when a scientist (Stephen Merchant) employs her to steal explosive secrets he sold to the US government.

Salander soon finds herself in a violent web of intrigue when her apartment is torched and the perpetrators leave her for dead.

Her old journalist ally Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) returns to help her protect the scientist's young son, retrieve the lost data, and of course, save the world.

Unexpectedly, her past catches up to her, as her long-believed-dead twin sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) comes back into her life, causing her to relive her childhood trauma.

As expected, the role required a lot of physical preparation to get Foy into shape.

INTENSE

She said: "I knew it was going to be a really intense shooting schedule, and I had to do a lot of stunts and running and generally throw myself around, so I had to take care of myself physically.

"Lisbeth doesn't eat very well, and she just has that kind of physicality that she can't really gain weight.

"I didn't want to lose loads of weight. I thought it was more important for me to be sinewy and strong and be able to sort of stand my ground really. So I had to do a lot of exercise with a trainer."

And then there were the haircut and tattoos.

She said: "I think the haircut gave me an inner Berliner because everybody had that haircut in Berlin. I thought, 'I'm really edgy and cool, I've got an undercut.' And then I looked around, I was like, 'Oh, so does everyone else.'

"And I loved getting the tattoos. When the water was freezing cold and they were transferring them onto my back, I didn't like it quite so much. I matched them to the book. It is very clear in the book how many tattoos she has. In the end, they sort of felt like part of my body."

There was the Swedish accent to master as well, which Foy did with a dialect coach.

"I said I would only do the film if they let me do a Swedish accent," she said.

"It felt really, really important to me. That is who Lisbeth is, and is the essence of the book.

"The thing I found out about the Swedish accent is that it is such a friendly, kind, joyful, kind of bouncy accent.

"It is so charming, especially when spoken in English, and that is not the kind of words you say about Lisbeth Salander. So it was a tricky balance to try and bring those two things together."

The motorcycle riding, however, was done by a stunt double because getting a licence would have taken Foy years, she said with a laugh.

She added: "If I had a year to prepare, no question, I would have done it all. But I really didn't, because I was shooting (Neil Armstrong biopic) First Man at the time, so that was never going to happen.

"So I had stunt driving training which was the best day of my life, and I got to do handbrake turns and I got to drive so fast in a Volvo and then turn it around.

"I got to drive a Lamborghini at about a mile an hour, because it cost too much money for me to put my foot to the pedal. And I got to drive fast on a fake motorbike on the back of a rig, which is about as close as I got."