Felicity Jones

Felicity Rose Hadley Jones (born 17 October 1983) is an English actress.

Felicity Rose Hadley Jones was born in Birmingham on 17 October 1983.

She has one elder brother.

Her mother worked in advertising and her father was a journalist.

She grew up in Bournville.

Her uncle Michael Hadley is also an actor, which prompted Jones's interest in acting as a child.

One of her great-great-grandmothers was Italian and hailed from Lucca.

After Kings Norton Girls' School, Jones attended King Edward VI Handsworth School, to complete A-levels and went on to take a gap year (during which she appeared in the BBC series Servants).

She then read English at Wadham College, Oxford.

She started her professional acting career as a child, appearing in The Treasure Seekers (1996) at age 12.

She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one series of the television series The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College.

On radio, she has played the role of Emma Grundy in the BBC's The Archers.

When Weirdsister College began in 2001, Jones returned as Hallow.

In 2003, she starred as Grace May in the BBC drama Servants.

She appeared in student plays, including Attis in which she played the titular role, and, in 2005, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors for the Oxford University Dramatic Society summer tour to Japan, starring alongside Harry Lloyd.

Jones began acting at the age of 11 at after-school workshop Central Junior Television, which was funded by Central Television.

At age 14, she appeared in the first series of The Worst Witch.

Since 2006, Jones has appeared in the films Northanger Abbey (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008), Chéri (2009), The Tempest (2010), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and True Story (2015).

She took the leading role in the 2007 ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and starred in Polly Stenham's That Face at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2007.

In 2008, she appeared in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden.

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.

Her longest running role around this time was on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where she played Emma Carter until 2009 (currently played by Emerald O'Hanrahan).

In January 2009, the five-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.

Her performance in the 2011 film Like Crazy was met with critical acclaim and awards including a special jury prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

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.

For the film, Jones did her own hair and make-up and improvised her dialogue.

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.

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 & Gabbana.

Her performance as Jane Hawking in the 2014 biographical film The Theory of Everything earned her nominations for the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 2016, Jones starred in the adventure-thriller Inferno, the fantasy drama A Monster Calls, and the space opera Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Jyn Erso.

She has since portrayed Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018), and has starred in the streaming films The Aeronauts (2019), The Midnight Sky, and The Last Letter from Your Lover (2021).