Actress Claire Foy, who was brought up in Buckinghamshire before becoming a screen star, is playing a lead role in a movie adaptation of a much-loved children's story.

The award-winning actress, 41, is best known for portraying the late Queen Elizabeth in the hit Netflix royal drama series.

Now she has been cast as the children's mother Polly in the popular Enid Blyton story The Magic Faraway Tree, alongside Spiderman actor Andrew Garfield.

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Ms Foy was at Oxford School of Drama in Woodstock on a one-year acting course from 2006 to 2007.

Brought up in Buckinghamshire, the actress who now lives in London has always loved the countryside.

She remembers childhood as a time of reading and re-reading books until their spines fell off, and of “very long walks that never ended”.

Claire Foy (Image: Ian West/PA)

She told the Guardian: “I think everybody dreams of going off-grid and not investing in the world as it is. I’d be so happy if I could just burn my phone. But then I’d miss everyone. I’d miss WhatsApp."

Ms Foy added: "Parenthood is very, very different now, and the film reflects that.

"Children are growing up in a world that we don’t necessarily recognise because it’s not the same as when we were younger.

"It’s the constant navigation: how do you negotiate those things that are necessary to be in the world, when you also see the damage it does?”

Enid Blyton's books and the film trigger nostalgia about being a young child, according to the actress.

She added: “Growing up, there’s that point where the magic turns off, I suppose, where you stop believing and you start to know how the world works.

"And it’s about trying to elongate that experience for as long as humanly possible.”

Andrew Garfield plays the children's father Tim, and the cast also features Nicola Coughlan, Jennifer Saunders, Simon Russell Beale and Nonso Anozie.

Enid Blyton, who wrote the Famous Five series, died in 1968 and is regarded as one of the most prolific children's authors of all time.

The Magic Faraway Tree is in UK cinemas from March 27.