FELICITY JONES

 “Well I suppose it started when I was about 12,” recounts Felicity Jones on her early desire to become an actress. “I’d always been obsessed with dressing up. I used to do plays with my cousins and my brother and perform them in front of our parents. So I think the acting has always been there.” After responding to an ad for an acting workshop that she attended after school, not  only did she perform plays, but she also picked  up a few circus skills.
    “I can juggle!” she declares proudly.  “With only three… but I’m working on it!” The actress followed the training with acting jobs  in television and radio (she provides the voice of Emma Carter in the long-running Radio 4 drama The Archers) and has slowly been building  a CV including critically acclaimed turns on stage and starring in films opposite some of the most established names in British film and theatre. Her performances have bestowed Jones a strong reputation as one of the hottest young British talents, but that early lust for dressing  up is still something that continues to influence  her approach to work.
    “I went to a stag do last weekend and I had to dress up as a boy,” she reveals. “I would like to play a guy at some point. I want to keep testing myself and keep finding interesting aspects to a character so a male part would be interesting. I quite enjoyed it! You know, like in the Shakespearean way.”
    Coincidentally, Jones will be portraying  Miranda in Julie Taymor’s upcoming version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which has reversed the gender of the main character, Prospero, so Dame Helen Mirren can take the lead in the adaptation. Content with playing a woman for the time being, Jones is full of praise for her co-star.
    “It was so weird seeing her in The Queen,” Jones remarks as we sit in a room with a giant promotional poster of Mirren in her Oscar-winning role staring down at us. “She’s nothing like that at all. She’s such a free-spirited woman and was really encouraging. As a young actor you tend to take everything very seriously so it’s good to work with people who have been through it.  Her advice is you’ve got to have a level headed attitude as it’s daunting to work on something that is potentially shown to millions of people and she’s got a very balanced view that your life is as important as your work. I try not to forget that.”
    The cast of The Tempest collects together some of the biggest names in British film, with Mirren and Jones joined by stars such as Alfred Molina, Alan Cumming, Ben Whishaw and also the notorious lothario Russell Brand. “He was very well-behaved,” Jones reveals when asked if the comedian made any advances towards her on the set. “He had a Top Three list and I don’t even think I made it into his top three!” she adds, sounding perhaps a little disappointed. Apparently, Mirren was at the top of Brand’s lust list, followed by Whishaw at number two and Reeve Carney in third.  “Maybe I was fourth,” she ponders.  The set was spectacular. “We were filming in Hawaii on an island called Big Island, which is volcanic and the scenes with Taliban’s Cave were all with completely black rocks. Julie Taymor said there mustn’t be a palm tree in sight so it’s using Hawaii’s unusual landscapes rather than the stereotypical palm trees and sand. So you’re literally walking on lava rock and the textures are absolutely incredible – scenery that I’d never imagined could exist.”  It is not just the Shakespeare play that marries Jones with other British talents. Filming recently finished on Cemetery Junction, the first foray into the world of feature film from comedy duo Steve Merchant and Ricky Gervais, in which Jones has a lead role.
    “It’s quite daunting having two of the world’s premier comic geniuses judging your comedy work – especially ’cause they’re such heroes for our generation. So at first it was quite intimidating, but they’re very specific and very giving in how they work so you feel very comfortable when you’re doing it.”
    The film is loosely based on Gervais’ youth in the Reading area during the 70s, featuring a group of young adults who are at a turning point in their lives. Jones plays a budding photographer with wild ambition, held back by her parents who want her to settle down and marry. She meets  a young man, played by Christian Cooke, who she befriends. As the drama unfolds, they realise their feelings for one other. But if you’re expecting passionate love scenes, think again. 
    “Ricky and Stephen are really inspired by [the 1960 film] The Apartment and the whole idea is they have this romantic relationship but don’t actually kiss. The relationship is based on friendship – it develops as romance, but is very much ‘shut up and deal’ rather than the big Hollywood kiss. What’s great is how [Merchant and Gervais] constantly deconstruct in their work – they sort of deconstruct the kind of traditional ideas of narrative within the film.”
    With her on-screen parents played by Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson, Jones has clearly left her dressing up box far behind, and is firmly on course to becoming one of Britain’s elite acting talents.“It’s great to see and work with people who’ve been doing it for years and years and years,” she says of her recent experiences. “You can learn so much just from watching other people,” she says.  “It’s been very inspiring.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Issue 20, November 2009. Photography Ben Rayner]