Felicity Jones

This article is written from a real world point of view and so is not considered part of The Worst Witch universe.

Felicity Jones
Birth Name
Date of Birth	17 October 1983
Place of Birth	Birmingham, England, UK
Occupation	Actress
Years Active	1996–present
Role	Ethel Hallow

Felicity Jones (born 17 October 1983) is an English actress from Birmingham. She is best known to television audiences for her role as the school bully Ethel Hallow in the first series of The Worst Witch (she was replaced by Katie Allen for series two and three), and its sequel Weirdsister College.

She started her professional acting career as a child, appearing at age 12 in The Treasure Seekers (1996). Jones also co-starred in Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant's anterior feature length outing Cemetery Junction.

Felicity has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for her role as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything, and is also starring in Star Wars: Rouge One.

Biography

Early life

Jones was born and brought up in Birmingham, England, the daughter of Julia (née Hadley) and Gareth Jones. Her uncle is actor Michael Hadley. She has one sibling, a brother. One of her great-great-grandmothers was Italian, as she was born in Lucca, Tuscany. Her middle name, Rose, is the first name of her grandmother. Her father was a journalist while her mother was in advertising.

Jones started her professional acting career as a child, appearing at age 12 in The Treasure Seekers (1996). She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one season in the television show The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College.

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, graduating with a British undergraduate degree classification 2:1 in 2006. Whilst studying English, she appeared in student plays, including Attis in which she played the title role, and, in 2005, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors for the Oxford University Dramatic Society summer tour to Japan, starring alongside Harry Lloyd.

She took time off from acting to attend school during her formative years, and has worked steadily since she graduated from Wadham College, Oxford in 2006. On radio, she is known for playing the long-running role of Emma Grundy in The Archers. In 2008, she appeared in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden.

Career

Jones was encouraged to take up acting by her father, and later, by her uncle, the actor Michael Hadley. After the first series of The Worst Witch, Jones was replaced by Katie Allen. When Weirdsister College began in 2001, Jones returned as Ethel 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 is on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where she played Emma Carter.

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 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 plays the role of Julie in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Cemetery Junction (2010). She also appeared in Soulboy and 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 Friedrich Schiller's Intrigue and Love 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. She also co-starred in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which was released on 2 May 2014. She played Felicia Hardy; an assistant of Harry Osborn.

Her current highlight is her 2014 performance as Jane Hawking in the film The Theory of Everything, a biopic charting the life and love between Jane Wilde Hawking and the world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, with Eddie Redmayne starring as Hawking. The film has received critical acclaim mostly due to her and Redmayne's performances. For her role as Jane, she received widespread acclaim and nominations from numbers of organizations, including an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

In February 2015, she was cast as Jyn Erso in the Star Wars spin-off film, Rogue One with Gareth Edwards directing.

Personal life

In 2013, Jones split from her boyfriend of ten years, sculptor and Internet artist Ed Fornieles, whom she met at Oxford University when he was at the Ruskin School of Art. In 2015, she began dating director Charles Guard. Their engagement was announced in May 2017, and the couple married in June 2018. In December 2019, a representative for Jones confirmed the couple are expecting their first child. Their child was born by September 2020.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1996	The Treasure Seekers	Alice Bastable	TV movie
1998	The Worst Witch	Ethel Hallow	TV series; 13 episodes
2001	Weirdsister College	Ethel Hallow	TV series; 13 episodes
2003	Servants	Grace May	TV series; 6 episodes
2007	Northanger Abbey	Catherine Morland	TV movie
	Cape Wrath	Zoe Brogan	TV series; 8 episodes
2008	Doctor Who	Robina Redmond	TV series; Episode: "The Unicorn and the Wasp"
	Flashbacks of a Fool	Young Ruth
	Brideshead Revisited	Lady Cordelia Flyte
2009	Chéri	Edmée
	The Diary of Anne Frank	Margot Frank	TV miniseries; 5 episodes
2010	Cemetery Junction	Julie Kendrick
	Soulboy	Mandy
2011
	The Tempest	Miranda
	Chalet Girl	Kim
	Like Crazy	Anna	Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Actor National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Breakout Performance Nominated - Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Breakthrough Performance
	Albatross	Beth
	Hysteria	Emily Dalrymple
	Page Eight	Julianne Worricker	TV movie
2012	Cheerful Weather for the Wedding	Dolly Thatchem
2013	Breathe In	Sophie
2014	True Story		Post-Production
	The Invisible Woman	Nelly Ternan	Post-Production
	The Amazing Spider-Man 2		Post-Production, Unknown Role
	Salting the Battlefield	Julianne Worricker
	Girls	Dottie	Episode: "Role-Play"
	The Theory of Everything	Jane Wilde Hawking	Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress
2015	True Story	Jill
2016	Collide	Juliette
	A Monster Calls	Conor's mother
	Inferno	Sienna Brooks
	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	Jyn Erso

Other works

• The Archers (1999–2009), Emma Grundy – BBC Radio 4 soap opera
• The Snow Queen, Creation Theatre Company (2005–06), Gerda
• That Face, Royal Court Theatre (2007), Mia
• The Chalk Garden, Donmar Warehouse (2008), Laurel
• Luise Miller, Donmar Warehouse (2011)

Trivia

• Felicity is, without a doubt, the most successful in acting of the young cast from The Worst Witch.
• According to the mother of Felicity Jones (season 1 Ethel), the actress chose not to return to the show because she missed home while she was away filming. Katy Allen replaces her for the next two seasons with the explanation being that Ethel magically changed her appearance with a "witch-over". Felicity Jones actually returned to play Ethel again for the spin-off Weirdsister College.

External links

• Template:Imdb
• Radio 4 interview
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/20/felicity-jones-chalet-girl-interview