Felicity Jones talks 'Inferno,' 'Rogue One' and keeping secrets
Jones hints at how, for her "Inferno" character Sienna Brooks, not everything is as it seems and tells of her lifelong love of Star Wars.
Felicity Jones is going from strength to strength when it comes to establishing her geek-culture hero status.
After winning an Oscar nomination for her role in "The Theory of Everything," the Stephen Hawking biopic starring Eddie Redmayne, her next project is to get every Star Wars fan on the internet into a tizz. But ahead of the "Rogue One" release at the end of year, she can be seen starring in "Inferno," the latest film in the Da Vinci Code series, based on the books by Dan Brown.
In "Inferno," Jones plays Sienna Brooks, a doctor who joins forces with series hero Robert Langdon, a character being reprised for the third time by Tom Hanks. Brooks is a whip-smart match for Harvard art history professor Langdon, but there's more to her part in the plot than her initial sidekick status implies.
Speaking to CNET about the complexity of her role, Jones said she kept all the layered aspects of the doctor's character in mind the whole way through the shoot, even through take after take being chased by drones.
"I definitely wanted to play that in the beginning," said Jones, "that she was someone with a secret, so that perhaps when you watch the film again you could start to see the clues that something else is going on for Sienna, that not everything is as it seems."
She was drawn to the role, she added, because of the contemporary story and because of Ron Howard, the movie's director.
For "Rogue One," it was a different matter. She "jumped at the chance" to play a great lead role, she said. And of course there was the opportunity to be part of a long-running and well-loved movie franchise that she had adored as a child.
"For everyone, Star Wars has been a part of their lives in some capacity," she said. "I remember watching it very early on with my cousins and my brother and we were all cuddled around the VHS player, which sounds very old-fashion, but that was the way then."