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Felicity Jones graced the pages of Perfect Magazine Issue 8 in March 2025, showcasing her timeless elegance and style.

In March 2025, Felicity Jones was featured in a stunning photoshoot for Perfect Magazine’s Issue 8. The British actress, known for her roles in The Theory of Everything and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, captivated readers with her timeless elegance and sophisticated style. The photoshoot, captured by a renowned photographer, highlighted Felicity’s versatility and grace, as she donned a series of chic and fashionable outfits. Each look exuded a sense of classic beauty, perfectly complementing Felicity’s natural charm. The feature also included an in-depth interview, where Felicity discussed her latest projects and shared insights into her career and personal life. Fans and fashion enthusiasts were thrilled to see Felicity gracing the pages of Perfect Magazine, making this issue a standout in the fashion world.


Felicity Jones was in a mall in her native England when she learned about her second Oscar nomination.

“I was going up the escalator”, she tells PEOPLE in this week’s 2025 Oscar Portfolio, on newsstands Friday. “I was just doing some last-minute shopping, and I got the call and spoke to my publicist and agents and was kind of cheering as I was going up the escalator”.

Fellow shoppers, she adds, were “probably looking around going, ‘What is she doing?'”

Jones, 41, is a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee this year for The Brutalist, in which she plays Hungarian-Jewish immigrant Erzsébet Tóth. The Brady Corbet–directed, Adrien Brody–starring epic earned 10 nominations, including Best Picture, from the Academy on Jan. 23.

“It’s just been a fantastic celebration of the film. I mean, we never quite expected the reception that we have had”, says Jones. “You don’t get this many opportunities. So I am trying to enjoy every minute of it”.

For the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story star, The Brutalist marks a return to the Oscar stage. Her first nomination, in 2015 for Best Actress, was for the Stephen and Jane Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything opposite Eddie Redmayne.

“I feel as though I’ve been through a lot personally, some big changes”, says Jones, noting that exactly a decade has passed between nominations.

Among those changes: becoming a mother to two kids with husband Charles Guard.

“It’s consistent juggling all the time”, says the actress of her work-life balance. “It really makes your time very precious, having a family, and so [working] becomes even more meaningful. And particularly in the films that I’ve been lucky enough to do, they’re projects that I have really loved reading the scripts, and have invested wholeheartedly into because when you work on something, it really has to count”.

At the 97th Academy Awards, to be held March 2 in Los Angeles, Jones is nominated alongside Monica Barbaro, Ariana Grande, Isabella Rossellini and Zoe Saldaña.

As far as her Oscar look goes, she says she has “a very good idea” of how to follow up her gray Alexander McQueen ball gown of 2015.

“I’m very excited about it”, she teases, noting she’s currently in the process of various fittings. “Fashion has been something that I’ve always been fascinated by and enjoyed. I’m looking forward to wearing the dress that I’ve picked”.

Conan O’Brien hosts the 2025 Oscars, which will air live from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu.

Source : people.com


Every time Brady Corbet makes a movie, he’s thinking, “This could be the last one”. He doesn’t want it to be the last one, but when you’re filming, say, a 3½-hour drama about the artistic struggles of a fictional architect, you never know.

“There’s a high likelihood”, Corbet says, smiling.

The Brutalist, nominated for 10 Oscars including best picture, directing, the original screenplay Corbet wrote with his partner, Mona Fastvold, and for actors Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce, will not be Corbet’s last movie. The film has become an event, a must-see for movie lovers. It’s both epic and intimate, a portrait of an immigrant architect, László Tóth, that examines the relationship between patron (Pearce) and artist (Brody), and considers the purpose and lasting value of art.

Much remains unspoken in The Brutalist, allowing us to use our imaginations to fill in the gaps.

“That’s what makes the film so grown-up”, Jones says. “The audience becomes active participants”.

But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in exploring the movie’s themes and mysteries. Corbet, Brody, Jones and Pearce, calling in from various corners of the world, were more than happy to provide some answers.

Why does Van Buren, the wealthy industrialist who becomes László’s benefactor, use the line, “I found our conversation persuasive and intellectually stimulating” — twice — in their first meetings?
Pearce: Let’s call it the ridiculousness of the man. I know it gets a bigger laugh the second time, but the first time he says it in the cafe, there was nothing intellectually stimulating about that conversation. Adrien was just sitting there, like a teenager being told off in a principal’s office.

Might Van Buren have feelings for László that go beyond the intellect?
Brody: There are a lot of emotions at stake. I don’t disagree, but it’s more complex than that.
Pearce: There are indicators of his attraction, some even within the dynamic of the three of them [László, his wife, Erzsébet, played by Jones, and Van Buren]. It is a bit of a love triangle, isn’t it? When she finally turns up, I’m going, “This person has come to take my man”.

Is that why Van Buren was so keen on getting her a job in New York almost immediately? “You’ll only be gone… five days a week”.
Pearce: Yes! “Keep away from my find!”
Jones: Erzsébet’s experiences with trauma have made her so aware of how terrible human beings can be. From the moment she meets Van Buren, she knows who he is and that he’s a problem.
Brody: László possesses qualities that Van Buren doesn’t. With all his power and ability, he doesn’t have the same creative spirit. There’s something when you encounter someone who is so uniquely creative. You appreciate it. It’s something to marvel at.
Pearce: When I press my face to the marble [at the quarry, when László takes Van Buren to look at marble for the center he’s building], Brady was quite specific about wanting me to look at [László]. That in itself is one of the little tells about my attraction to him — on all sorts of levels. There’s something deliberately coy and seductive that I bring him into my experience I’m having with this marble.
Brody: It’s a love- and hate-filled dynamic. There’s antagonistic superiority and disdain amid love and appreciation and adoration for his creative spirit. There’s a very convoluted thing going on.

The eight-minute conversation at the Christmas party between László and Van Buren, the one that’s been called the “skeleton key” to understanding the movie, has Van Buren telling a long, cruel story about stiffing his grandparents, ending it by saying, “That is how much I love my mother”.
Pearce: That’s such a spiderweb, isn’t it?

Just how much does Van Buren love his mother?
Pearce: Someone said to me the other day, “We get to see what a mummy’s boy he was”.
Corbet: I thought of the mother as Rebecca at Manderley, this specter that haunts the house. It seems to be a rather unhealthy obsession. And it feeds the concept for the whole project. He has this scene where he describes to László how he knows how to read the tea leaves and the fact that the two of them came together on the eve of his mother’s death, which is what leads him to do something that’s equally mad.
Pearce: There’s this performative façade of strength to Van Buren, but on some level, he feels powerless. And he feels that the only way to actually get over that is to present himself as powerful. And in that conversation with László, you see he recognizes László’s artistry, but that’s tangled up with his own insecurities about not possessing those qualities himself.
Corbet: He’s not satisfied just to own the artist’s work. He wants to possess the artist as well.

Which we see, quite literally, later in the movie when Van Buren rapes László. Some critics have found the scene rather abrupt and tonally jarring. Why did it seem necessary?
Pearce: The main question I had for Brady was the justification and the understanding of what happens.
Corbet: For me, you should see it coming from miles away. After two hours and 45 minutes, there’s a lot of threads there.
Brody: I think it’s intended to be a big surprise to the audience. But when I read it, I did see it coming.
Jones: That scene is so pivotal. It’s so necessary. What’s so striking about the film is that it is full of hope, but the hope comes from trauma. You can’t have one without the other.
Pearce: I think Brady brilliantly keeps open about how much this has happened before, whether [Van Buren] is a repressed homosexual. But what jumped out at me is when we see Joe Alwyn [playing Van Buren’s son, Harry] running up and down those stairs [after Erzsébet confronts him about the rape], going, “Father! Father!” I looked at that and went, “Ah. Wow. I reckon I have abused him”.
Corbet: The way Joe Alwyn responds to Felicity’s accusation, especially after we’ve seen him take Zsófia [László’s orphaned teenage niece] into the woods. You see this cycle of violence in the family.
Brody: It’s not as simple as a metaphor for being literally screwed over by your benefactor. It pertains to a deeper hatred. We shot it in multiple ways, in a much more graphic way as well. It speaks to a kind of oppressive brutality of dominance, what makes individuals so cruel and insensitive and behave so despicably at times.
Corbet: The film was made in the style of a 1950s melodrama. The way that I was thinking about it was: What would Nicholas Ray do if he could get away with it today in 2025? It’s not a neorealist picture. I was thinking about Powell and Pressburger. There’s a largess and there’s a directness in the films, allegory and visual allegory. There’s interplay between graceful moments and more direct, operatic moments. That’s what gives the film, and all my films, a very specific, very jagged architecture that’s unlike a lot of other films. To be honest, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But it is an intentional thing.

What happens to Van Buren when he disappears after Erzsébet confronts him?
Jones: Guy always says: “Therapy”.
Pearce: I’ve gone back and forth. The power of him just being reduced to nothing, being gone, nonexistent… that enabled me to go, “Great. I don’t have to think about this anymore”. Which is pretty lazy of me.
Corbet: My partner, Mona, says that once this character has been dismantled, he is just irrelevant. So it doesn’t matter if he went on a long walk, or if he hung himself, or if he drowned himself, or froze to death out in the forest.
Brody: What happens to Van Buren? I don’t think it’s very good. I think most people come to the same conclusion. The shame, it’s pretty great to be confronted with it. It’s a deeply disruptive moment. They can’t find him, so I interpret it as something terribly final.
Jones: He’s like a sprite. He disappears into thin air.
Pearce: I mean, the obvious thing is some sort of suicide, because this is gonna be just too big for him to bear. But I wouldn’t solidify that. The beauty is that he’s just gone.

Twenty-two years pass and then we see László being feted at the First Architecture Biennale. How do you imagine his life in those intervening decades?
Corbet: I wanted the character to look, visibly, like he’d recently had a stroke and that he’d aged a lot. I was looking at a lot of images of Chet Baker who, at like 57, looked like he was 110.
Brody: It’s interesting witnessing someone you’ve spent all this time with, seeing him much later in life, quite frail, reflecting on his own journey and what he has left behind and the toll it’s taken. For László, there’s a lot of loss. He’s constantly forced to endure. It’s not an easy thing for people to overcome hardship, let alone what he experienced in the concentration camps.
Corbet: There’s a suggestion that some of his projects were realized. There’s a reason we decided to go predominantly with drawings. Even the world’s greatest architects tend to not be particularly prolific. My favorite architect is Peter Zumthor, and he’s been working on the new LACMA for so many years.
Brody: There are opportunities of creative fulfillment, and that is such a deep part of any artistic person’s yearnings. So there is fulfillment in that immersion. But I think as far as a fulfilling personal life that’s brought a great deal of happiness and closure to everything? I don’t know if that has ever come.
Corbet: It is a film about legacy, absolutely. But what you’re left with at the end of the film is that László’s legacy is not necessarily the body of work he left behind. His legacy is family and his niece. Through his accomplishments, he has paved the way for her to have some kind of life she might not have had otherwise.

Did he ever build that bowling alley he talked about when he first met Van Buren?
Brody: [Laughs] I don’t think he does. A Brutalist bowling alley. The ball is actually a cube.

Is anyone going to build The Brutalist popcorn bucket that I saw mocked up?
Corbet: I think [Brutalist co-star] Alessandro Nivola sent that to us. Alessandro wins the internet every day.
Brody: I could help design it. It could be made of paper, like an origami cube. You make it and blow into it, and then it pops open into a sphere, and then you just fold it in and fill it with popcorn. If I wasn’t so busy with my day job, I’d get to it.

Source : latimes.com


Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is among the leading pack of this year’s Oscar nominees with 10 nods, including best director, screenplay, and picture, for which it is probably the current favorite. A real sign of the film’s strength, however, can be found elsewhere in the best supporting actress nomination for Felicity Jones.

There had been some grumbling that awards voters were struggling with the film’s 3-hour and 35-minute run and were missing the movie’s second act, which is also its strongest, when Erzsébet Tóth, played by Felicity Jones, is introduced. Clearly that was wrong.

Jones’ Erzsébet is the wife of László (Adrien Brody), a famed Hungarian architect who has fled Europe for America after the Nazis cease power. Erzsébet was left behind but when she finally arrives in the U.S. her presence complicates a new relationship László has struck with a wealthy benefactor, played by Guy Pearce.

“It’s all completely unexpected”, Jones tells us of the film’s reception. “Over the last couple of years, it’s been cool to work on stories that are distinctive and feel like they are going to make a real impact. It’s quite reassuring that, in some ways, it’s all paying off”.

The film debuted in Venice where Corbet won best director. Festival acclaim successfully rolled into awards buzz, with the film landing three Golden Globes and a further nine BAFTA nominations, including another Best Supporting Actress nod for Jones.

Jones was last on the awards trail in 2015 with James Marsh’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. Below, the Birmingham native speaks about how Corbet — a relatively new director — sold her on The Brutalist, this year’s tough awards season, and the pushback against Corbet’s use of AI on the film.

Felicity, congrats on the Oscar nom. How are you feeling about it and the film’s general reception?
It was really only when we showed the film in Venice that we realized the reception was much greater than we expected. When you’re trying to make stories that are original, complex, and nuanced, you naturally know that it’s not going to be an easy course with the way of the world. The film doesn’t resort to any cliche or sentimentality. The opportunity to put something like this in the world is pretty rare. There’s no template, so people don’t know they want something like this. And then when it’s there, people realize how cool it is.

The film does take some big swings. Why did you trust that Brady could pull it off? He’s only made two films as a director.
Firstly, it was the script. It was like reading a Russian novel. It was so intelligent. That’s what hooked me initially and then with Brady, it was seeing his previous work. I’d known him a little when we were in our 20s. He’s always worked with incredible auteurs throughout his life as an actor. Looking back, he was utilizing that as his film school. I mean, what a good idea. Why not learn from from the best? So it felt like all the ingredients were there to make something very singular, and at that time, that’s really what I was looking for. Something that was incredibly distinctive. But alongside that, so much of it is trust. You don’t really know. It’s a leap of faith, which doesn’t always pay off. In this respect, it did. But there is something about Brady. Maybe because he acted as a child you can feel his confidence. He spent many hours on sets and that does give him a real ease and imbues you with a certain confidence on set.

You say you were looking for distinctive work. Do you think that has been missing from your career so far?
I think I was looking for a challenge, perhaps in a new direction, particularly with the intricacy and intimacy of the relationship between Erzsébet and László that, in some ways, was very new territory for me. I felt like I wanted to push the boundaries in some way I hadn’t before.

Your performance is very physical. Your character is suffering from a physical disability. But there is also an indescribable weight to her, a sort of palpable intelligence, which is actually what makes Guy Pearce’s character feel so threatened and changes the direction of the film.
Yes, because she’d suffered from malnutrition, there’s an element of dissociation from her physical self. The trauma that she has gone through in the camps meant that to a certain extent, she’s had to disconnect from her physical self to survive. Part of that survival has been her connection with Laszlo, but it also gives her this incredible power, because there is nothing anyone can do that will surprise her. She’s been to the ends of the earth in some ways, emotionally and we would presume, physically. So when she meets Van Buren, there’s something quite intimidating about that for him.

I remember hearing Christine Vachon, who is an EP on The Brutalist, speaking recently about how difficult it was to raise money for this. Did you as a performer feel how tight things were?
We were quite insulated from the pragmatic struggles of getting it made. In some ways, it’s a much harder experience when there’s no trust. When you struggle but have trust in each other like what we had with The Brutalist, then it’s quite an enjoyable experience. Anyone who turns up to do that film is there for the right reasons, so it creates a very harmonious atmosphere. Brady’s main thing was to come to set knowing what you’re doing. I’d been aboard the film for a couple of years before we shot, so I felt very emboldened when we were making it. I’d never seen such a collection of prepared actors.

Brady put out a statement about why and how he used AI during the film’s post-production after some criticism. Did you know he had used AI to enhance performances? And what did you think about the wider discussion?
It’s obviously an element of post-production, and that’s very much the director’s prerogative. As an actor, you just have to do everything in your power to prepare and work tirelessly. Adrien and I both worked with a brilliant dialect coach, Tanera Marshall, and so much of the focus is finding the voice of the character. Guy [Pearce] has talked about this as well. What is the cadence? How do I make that person feel as believable as possible? That’s what’s in your control as an actor.

Is AI something you’re worried about as an actor?
There are so many facets. I often use the analogy that making a film is a bit like putting a football on a pitch, and you put it into the world, and it’ll get kicked around in many different directions. To a certain extent, that’s part of the the pleasure of making something, seeing what the world makes of it and it’s fascinating when a film throws up so many different and nuanced discussions.

It’s been a particularly rough year for Oscar campaigning. We’ve had the Emilia Perez revelations over the weekend. What have you thought about it all?
You know, I’ve been watching all the films coming out and it’s been an amazing year of cinema. These stories are just exquisite. I was watching Sing Sing the other night and thought it was fantastic. You want people to see these films because these are special cultural items being put into the world. That’s why people don’t mind going out and talking about theirs films because it feels like it’s something important. And it puts more bums on seats, the more you talk about it. So if I believe in what I’ve made, I’m happy to do it.

You’ve got a production company, Piecrust Pictures. What are you interested in doing behind the camera?
The thing that intrigued me was being involved in the script from a much more embryonic stage and being able to influence the characters rather than coming in right at the end as an actor. That has always naturally appealed to me and has been one of the most exciting aspects of chatting directly with writers.

Your company is producing a Formula One series. What’s the story behind that? Are you an F1 fan?
Well, actually, I grew up in the Midlands and my father would take us to the city center of Birmingham, and they would turn it into a Superprix. So I have these formative memories of racing. It felt like a natural project to explore. I’m also intrigued by these things that touch many people and racing, probably thanks to Drive To Survive, is really striking a chord across the world. It’s been pretty amazing getting inside the world of Formula One.

What stage is that at currently? Pre-production?
Yes, we are developing the script as we speak.

What have you got up next?
I have another film coming out at the end of the year called Oh. What. Fun., which is a Christmas ensemble comedy with Michelle Pfeiffer and a wonderful group of actors. We shot that last summer. It’s very different from The Brutalist, but still distinctive and hopefully original in some way.

Source : deadline.com


Following a career-defining performance in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024), the British actor talks to Kitty Grady about Dogme 95, channeling Isabelle Huppert and the power of creative partnerships.

Felicity Jones is in her car, ready to go. It is early on a Friday morning and, when the actor joins our Zoom call and I see her in the front seat of a stationary 4X4 on a street in London, I initially wonder if she is hiding from someone. “It’s an unusual place for an interview”, admits Jones. “But sometimes my car doubles as an office”. Coffee in hand, the actor is wearing a khaki parka and a grey jumper. I can’t decide whether her cascade of brown curls is natural or blow-dried. The car, Jones explains, is “a diary necessity”. A fitting for the Golden Globes is next on the day’s agenda. Jones, 41, received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Erzsébet Tóth in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, and is predicted to receive the same at the Oscars—her second Academy nomination since Best Actress in 2015 for the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (2014).

The qualifier ‘supporting’ has a particular resonance for Erzsébet. In Corbet’s three-hour, 55-minute epic about architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and his mission to establish himself in America, Jones plays his wife, who, for the first half of the film (a 15-minute intermission is in-built) is still stuck in Europe. While not physically present, we hear Erzsébet in voiceover, her letters to László creating a chronic atmosphere of longing. “She is swirling around the film before we see her in person, which is akin to how she’s existing in László’s imagination”, says Jones. “It puts you in his head. So that when she does arrive, you feel the length of time they have been apart”.

Erzsébet’s arrival embodies her in a very real way. She is accompanied by her orphaned, mute niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who pushes her aunt down a train platform in a wheelchair—osteoporosis from incarceration in concentration camps has left Erzsébet unable to walk. László and Erzsébet’s reunion is now deafening with feelings of separation. “They’re having to under- stand each other again, reconnect physically, emotionally”, says Jones. When I ask her which scenes were the most challenging to shoot, she replies: “All of them” four times. Yet while the emotional scenes all ran “like clockwork” the scene that was most technically difficult to shoot was one where Erzsébet and Zsófia are walking to catch a bus and are picked up by Van Buren, the man who has commissioned her husband to create a community centre in his name. A small moment, it also reveals the Erzsébet’s bind, “negotiating their need for his patronage versus her sense that he is a problematic person”.

As an actor, Jones has been known to get a bit ‘method’. For Chalet Girl (2011), she learned how to snowboard. For the play Luise Miller, in 2011 she lived with a Catholic family and attended mass regularly. For Like Crazy (2011), she made an audition tape mirroring that of her character’s. In The Aeronauts (2019), she did her own stunts, enduring a near fatal balloon crash on her first day of shooting. For The Brutalist, Jones lost weight, learned Hungarian, and did extensive research on the Holocaust. “It was a given I had to understand what this character has been through”, says Jones, who found a “wonderful guide” in a rabbi called Steven Katz who taught her about conversion. Yet she describes Erzsébet’s hairstyle—short, we can assume for a reason that is left powerfully unspoken—as a key way into her character: “Putting on a wig helps with a certain amount of transformation”.

Erzsébet is Jones as we haven’t really seen her before, marking a pivot for the actor into arthouse, auteur-driven cinema. “Coming out of the pandemic, I felt as though you really need to make things that are distinctive. Entertainment is crowded. So I was keen to do something with strong authorship”. A Michael Haneke fan, Jones had seen Corbet in the American version of Funny Games (2007). “There was something in the role of Erzsébet that reminded me of Isabelle Huppert’s work”, says Jones, of the Haneke star. When I ask Jones more about her own identity as a film viewer she describes the New Wave cinema that she became enamoured with while at University of Oxford, her love of Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Wes Anderson, as well as a burgeoning interest in Robert Eggers. When I ask why this professional shift towards more artistically daring work is happening now, she cites Dogme 95, the avant-garde Danish film movement defined by its strict rules of production. “As my time gets more compressed with a young family, the more I feel driven and decisive in my work. Sometimes when the world is completely open, we get overwhelmed by indecision”.

Drive is a characteristic Jones shares with Erzsébet. Despite the latter’s palpable weariness, she possesses a residual life force, particularly through her charm and intellect. “The physical frailty, but also the emotional and spiritual force of Erzsébet is consistent”, says Jones. “She is someone who has an incredible will to live”.

In preparing for the role, Jones started thinking about her own Italian grandmother who, at the turn of the 20th century, emigrated from Tuscany to England. “I’ve started to think about that journey. How do you build strong foundations in a country you’re not from? She must have had incredible drive”, says Jones. “It’s often the people with the most desire, or the most resourceful people who leave, because they’re seeking adventure, intellectual and emotional stimulation”. Erzsébet—and László’s—pursuit of the American Dream doesn’t come good. A respected foreign correspondent in Hungary, Erzsébet is reduced to writing copy for women’s magazines. When Zsófia, her “surrogate daughter” decides she is leaving for Israel, she decides to follow (Erzsébet’s condition suggests she will never have children of her own). “They just want out. They feel defeated by the system. Can you survive in a structure that doesn’t want to see you triumph?” says Jones of their decision to leave. In one of The Brutalist‘s most climactic scenes, Erzsébet, just strong enough to walk again, turns up at the Van Buren house to confront the family’s patriarch on a transgression towards her husband that will go undescribed here. “Her moment of truthfulness, you see how much it floors him, but his son comes and drags her to the floor. Triumph is twinned with indignity”, says Jones.

The Brutalist debunks stereotypes of the solitary male artist, offering instead ideas around creative partnership, interdependency, and care. On screen we see the emotional shelter Erzsébet provides László, their pain and passion mingled in an erotic scene in which the architect administers his pain-addled wife with heroin. Corbet co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Mona Fastvold and I ask if Jones sees her own marriage (with the film director Charles Guard) as a creative partnership. “We both share a deep, deep love of film. Our household is full of discussions of cinema and actors and directing”. Jones also runs a production company with her brother. “It’s such a nourishing way to work”, says the actor, recalling how, as children, they would write comedy sketches together and show their parents. “It’s hard to escape what you grew up with”.

Two years passed between Jones first receiving the script for The Brutalist and shooting. The actor has noted how, during that time, basically nothing of the script changed, even as financial and production challenges made it seem unlikely it would be made at all. “It took sheer force of determination because people don’t want to take risks. And then it’s made, and the market starts responding to it”, says Jones, referencing the early hype around the film. As comparison, I reference the popularity of Brat, Charli XCX’s non-commercial album which hit the mainstream last summer (Jones is set to star in 100 Nights of Hero, an adaptation of a graphic novel, with the singer). “I think… in cases like this it’s good to trust artists”, Jones suggests. “What is a world without originality? I mean, how dull”. Before we have a chance to say goodbye, my 40-minute Zoom conversation runs out unexpectedly. But I’m not too concerned. I know Felicity Jones has somewhere to be.

Source : a-rabbitsfoot.com




She’s been a professional actress for 23 years. She’s portrayed a villain, a resistance fighter and a Supreme Court justice. And she’s widely considered the embodiment of inner and outer beauty. Is Felicity Jones the closest thing to a modern-day superhero?  

Felicity Rose Hadley Jones became a working actress at an age when most kids are studying algebra rather than studying lines. “Well, my first role was in a costume drama for television called The Treasure Seekers, about a group of children trying to find a fortune to help their single father struggling as an inventor,” she recalls of the 1996 TV movie, for which the then 12-year-old Jones received second billing. “We shot it in a lovely old house just outside of London where there was a huge tree swing, which we would all play on in between scenes.”

A promotional poster shows the young star grinning widely along with the rest of the cast, a sure indication that Jones had found her calling among her fellow thespians. Nowadays that same cheeky smile can be seen on posters and advertisements all over the world, either for her latest blockbuster film — The Theory of EverythingRogue One: A Star Wars StoryOn the Basis of Sex come to mind — or in her role as global ambassador for Japanese cosmetics brand Clé de Peau Beauté, a position she’s held since early 2018. But how, one wonders, does she manage it all with such grace, such poise and such an unusual lack of personal turmoil?

“I joined a youth drama group when I was growing up, which I absolutely loved,” says the 35-year-old, who grew up near Birmingham in England’s West Midlands. “We learnt about acting in theatre, film and television. I made some lifelong friends there and that’s where I had auditions for professional work.”

At the time, Jones says, she didn’t have aspirations for a Hollywood career. School and schoolwork took precedence, even when it came to her youth group. “I never knew if I’d be able to act professionally, it was just something that I loved doing,” she says. “It was always such good fun and I loved the camaraderie around it.”

Jones continued acting throughout university, appearing in student plays, as she pursued a degree in English literature at the University of Oxford’s Wadham College. Now her portrait hangs in the college alongside fellow alumnae, including actress Rosamund Pike and author Monica Ali, a testament to the school’s “changing faces”.

Following her graduation, Jones appeared in a number of television movies and series in the UK, including one episode of Doctor Who. But before long the big screen came calling. After bit parts in films such as Brideshead Revisited and Chéri, she was cast as the star in The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor, and Like Crazy, directed by Drake Doremus.

Like Crazy was a huge experience. Working with Anton Yelchin and Drake Doremus was one of the most extraordinary acting and life experiences I’ve had,” Jones says. “It was the first time I improvised on camera, which I relished.”

It was reported that Doremus and co-writer Ben York Jones put together an outline, 50 pages long, and had Jones and Yelchin improvise off it. Her performance garnered a number of international awards, including Best Female Newcomer at the Empire Awards, Breakthrough Actor at the Gotham Awards, a tie for Breakthrough Performance from the National Board of Review, and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. Doremus must have also been pleased, considering he cast her in his next film, Breathe In, opposite Guy Pearce.

Breathe In was released in 2013, but it was following year that could be considered Jones’s breakout. Besides appearing in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as Felicia Hardy, aka Black Cat, she captivated audiences as Jane Hawking, first wife of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, in the biopic The Theory of Everything. A slew of award nominations followed, including Best Actress at both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

But Jones is quick to point out that she’s in it for the craft and the challenge, and not the awards or accolades. Over the years, she’s appeared in several plays and is still fondly remembered for her recurring role as Emma Carter in BBC Radio’s long-running soap, The Archers.

“The most important thing,” she says, “is the story you’re telling rather than the medium. Narrative is everything.”

Indeed, Jones has been known to throw herself into a role, whether she’s playing the villain to Tom Hanks’s protagonist Robert Langdon in Inferno or championing women’s rights as legendary Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex.

“I definitely like a challenge and I have to feel creatively invested in the story. I have to care about that person I’m playing in some way. I usually go for things that I can’t stop thinking about a couple of days after reading the script.”

Once she decides on a role, Jones goes all-in. “I really enjoy researching a character and understanding the world from their perspective. Physical prep is key, too — how does that person move?” she says. “Also finding the look is very important: trying on wigs, different costumes. There’s a huge amount of collaboration with creatives in the hair, make-up and costume departments. The approach is both external and psychological. Understanding what motivates that person: Why are they behaving in a certain way? Why are they making certain decisions?”

When it came to her latest big-budget, box-office sensation, Jones found herself studying kung fu among other “forces”. Rogue One saw her introduction as resistance fighter Jyn Erso in a critically praised portrayal that left audiences clamouring for more: the Kids’ Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards and MTV Movie Awards all nominated her in categories such as Choice Sci-Fi Movie Actress and Favorite Butt-Kicker.

Jones followed up her Star Wars turn by embracing the life story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the American attorney who championed women’s rights all the way to a seat on the US Supreme Court. “I adored playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” she says of On the Basis of Sex, which was released at the end of last year. “I often think of her as someone I would most like to be like!”

Now in post-production, Jones’s next film follows the story of pilot Amelia Wren (played by Jones) and The Theory of Everything costar Eddie Redmayne as they embark on an historic hot-air balloon expedition. “We’re all deeply proud of the film and it was an incredibly innovative story,” she says. “It’s not like anything anyone’s ever seen before. I adored its originality.”

Making so many films back to back doesn’t leave time for much else, although Jones enjoys “swimming, reading, cooking, seeing friends, and going to the theatre and art exhibitions”. She’s also open to looking beyond acting to a more behind-the-scenes role. “I love being involved in all stages of making entertainment. Having studied English literature at university, it feels very natural to be reading books and articles and thinking, could this be a good film or television programme?” she says. “I love exploring this side of production.”

Also keeping her busy is her work with Clé de Peau Beauté, for which she not only serves as muse and spokesperson but also gets involved in its various advocacy and philanthropic programmes. This year saw the establishment of the Power of Radiance, described by the company as “a multi-year philanthropic commitment that honours inspirational women from around the world whose advocacy for women and girls’ education has led to positive long-term impact on lives”.

“It’s an incredible project to be a part of and a highlight was the Power of Radiance event, where women from all over the world were brought together to discuss and celebrate the importance of female education,” Jones says of the global launch event in March in Tokyo honouring the programme’s first Power of Radiance Award recipient Muzoon Almellehan.

Almellehan fled Syria in 2013 and is the first individual with refugee status to be a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador. She spent three years living in refugee camps in Jordan, where as a 14-year-old she went from tent to tent convincing families that their daughters needed an education.

“Muzoon is an extraordinary woman, and her fight for equal education is breathtaking,” Jones says. “She’s articulate and warm and a very strong woman — an inspiration to be around.” While she may be the “face” that sells Clé de Peau Beauté to audiences around the world, Jones’s involvement in the Power of Radiance programme underscores the fact that she’s much more than meets the eye.

“Beauty is about looking after the inside as well as the outside. It’s about figuring out what makes you feel you and not being afraid to be that person. It’s not always an easy path but true beauty comes from that self-belief.”

Source : prestigeonline.com