Biography
Though she was a famous face in her native England since her teenage years, actor Felicity Jones first became an international star with her role as Jane Wilde Hawking in the acclaimed Stephen Hawking biopic "The Theory of Everything (2014). Born in Birmingham in 1983, Jones first began expressing herself as a performer through the after-school program Central Junior Television at age 11. At 15, she began playing the role of Emma Carter on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera "The Archers" in addition to landing her breakout TV role as Ethel Hollow on the fantasy themed tween series "The Worst Witch" (ITV, 1998-99). The part made Jones a beloved household name in the UK, and she would continue it on the follow-up series "Weirdsister College" (ITV, 2001-02). The series wrapped in 2002, just as Jones was completing her A-levels. She opted to take a "gap year" to star in her first production geared towards adults, the mini-series "Servants" (BBC, 2003), before enrolling at Oxford University where she majored in English and appeared in a number of plays with the college's Dramatic Society including Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors." Upon graduating, Jones returned to her on-camera career with full force, starring in a BBC TV movie adaptation of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" (BBC, 2007) and in a big screen adaptation of "Brideshead Revisited" (2008) with Matthew Goode. Jones would earn major acclaim for her role in the independent drama "Like Crazy" (2011), for which she not only styled her own hair and makeup but improvised much of her own dialogue as well. Her breakout role in "The Theory of Everything" came shortly thereafter, along with a small appearance in the superhero movie "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (2014). Hot off of this success, she would land a role with even more exposure, starring as the rebellious Jyn Erso in the "Star Wars" standalone film "Rogue One" (2016). Jones would actually prove her star power twice that same year, also appearing alongside Hollywood heavyweight Tom Hanks in the third installment in the "Da Vinci Code" (2006) franchise, "Inferno" (2016). Jones quietly married director Charles Guard in 2018 in time to celebrate her next acclaimed role, playing constitutional lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the period biopic "On the Basis of Sex" (2018). Jones next re-teamed with her "Theory of Everything" co-star Eddie Redmayne for the period film "The Aeronauts" (2019).
