Felicity Jones

Felicity Rose Hadley Jones, born on 17 October 1983, is an English actress who started her career as a child. She appeared in the film The Treasure Seekers in 1996 and played the character Ethel Hallow in the television series The Worst Witch in 1998. Her early work also included a performance in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden in 2008.

Jones gained recognition for several important roles. She played an exchange student in the romantic drama Like Crazy in 2011. She portrayed teacher Jane Hawking in the biopic The Theory of Everything in 2014, and a Holocaust survivor in The Brutalist in 2024. For these roles, she received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. She also acted as Jyn Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016 and as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex in 2018.

In addition to these, Jones appeared in many other films. These include the superhero film The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014, thrillers like True Story in 2015 and Inferno in 2016, and the fantasy drama A Monster Calls in 2016. She also starred in streaming films such as The Aeronauts in 2019, The Midnight Sky in 2020, and The Last Letter from Your Lover in 2021. In 2025, she starred in Train Dreams, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Early life and education

Felicity Rose Hadley Jones was born in Birmingham on 17 October 1983, and grew up in Bournville. Her mother worked in advertising and her father was a journalist. They separated when she was three years old, and she and her older brother lived with their mother.

One of her great-great-grandmothers came from Lucca in Italy. Her uncle Michael Hadley is also an actor, which sparked her love for acting when she was young. After attending Kings Norton Girls' School and King Edward VI Handsworth School, she took a gap year where she acted in the BBC series Servants. She then studied English at Wadham College, Oxford. During her time there, she performed in student plays, including Attis and The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare.

Career

Felicity Jones began acting when she was 11 years old at an after-school workshop. At age 14, she appeared in the first series of The Worst Witch. She returned as Ethel Hallow when Weirdsister College began in 2001. Her longest-running role during this time was on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where she played Emma Carter until 2009.

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. In 2008, she appeared in the films Brideshead Revisited and Flashbacks of a Fool, and in a revival of Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London.

In 2011, she won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her role in Like Crazy. In 2014, she portrayed Jane Wilde Hawking in the film The Theory of Everything, earning several award nominations for her performance. In 2016, she played Jyn Erso in the Star Wars film Rogue One, which was very successful. She continued to act in many films over the years, including The Aeronauts in 2019 and The Brutalist in 2024.

Personal life

Felicity Jones met artist Ed Fornieles at Oxford while he was studying at the Ruskin School of Art. They dated from 2003 until 2013.

In 2015, she started a relationship with director Charles Guard. They got engaged in May 2017 and got married in June 2018. They have two children—a son born in 2020 and a daughter in 2022.

Acting credits

Main article: List of Felicity Jones performances

Felicity Jones began her acting career as a child. She appeared in the show The Treasure Seekers in 1996 and played a character named Ethel Hallow in the television series The Worst Witch in 1998. Later, she performed in a play called The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse in 2008.

Accolades

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Felicity Jones

Felicity Jones has been recognized and honored for her work in acting. She has received many awards and nominations, showing how talented and hard-working she is. You can find a full list of these honors and achievements in the article linked above.