Felicity Jones - Career

Career

Jones was encouraged to take up acting by her uncle, the actor Michael Hadley. Her mother was also passionate about film and theatre. She began acting at 11 at an after-school workshop funded by Central Television. Jones appeared in the first series of The Worst Witch, after which she was replaced by Katie Allen. She left the series because she missed home. When Weirdsister College began in 2001, Jones returned as Hallow. During the shooting of Weirdsister College she was just seventeen, lived in a flat in Richmond and had a private tutor to get her through her A levels. Her longest and probably best known role overall was on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where she played Emma Carter (who is now played by Emerald O'Hanrahan).

In 2003 she starred as Grace May in the BBC drama Servants. She took the leading role in the 2007 ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and made her stage debut in Polly Stenham's That Face at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2007.

In 2008, she appeared in the films Brideshead Revisited and Flashbacks of a Fool, the Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" and a revival of Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London. In January 2009, the 5-part TV serial The Diary of Anne Frank, in which Jones played the role of Margot Frank alongside Tamsin Greig (as Edith Frank-Holländer) and Iain Glen (as Otto Frank), was broadcast on BBC One. Later that year in May, she performed in a rehearsed reading of Anthony Minghella's Hang Up at the High Tide Festival. Jones played the role of Julie in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's 2010 film Cemetery Junction. She also appeared in Soulboy and in Julie Taymor's big screen adaptation of The Tempest as Miranda.

On 29 January 2011, Jones won a Special Jury Prize (Dramatic) at the Sundance Film Festival for her performance as Anna in Drake Doremus's Like Crazy. She had to do her own hair and make-up in the film, while the dialogue was entirely improvised. Her performance earned comparisons to Carey Mulligan's Academy Award-nominated role in An Education. She also received the Best new Hollywood Award for this film at the 2011 Hollywood Film Awards. She appeared alongside Gossip Girl actor Ed Westwick in Chalet Girl, a romantic comedy released in March 2011, for which she had to undergo two months of snowboarding training and work undercover in a chalet at St Anton, scrubbing toilets and partying at the Krazy Kanguruh bar in preparation for the role. Jones said that the role was "something of a relief" after a string of costume roles and she was also keen to take on a comic role. Jones performed in Luise Miller, a new translation of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe by Mike Poulton at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London, in June and July 2011. She turned down the title role in Mirror Mirror to appear in the play, to the amazement of director Michael Grandage. Grandage acknowledged: "Everything else has had to be moved to accommodate … at a time when her career has gone sky-high." Jones lived with a Catholic family and attended Mass to prepare for the role. In 2011, Jones was announced as the new face of Burberry.In November, she was also announced as the new face of Dolce & Gabanna.

She will star in the noir science-fiction thriller The Scribbler, directed by Jake West.