TOBY JONES
The actor’s role call.
TRUMAN CAPOTE INFAMOUS (2006)
Now widely regarded as one of our finest character actors, Toby Jones was initially largely confined to supporting roles on the small and big screens (yes, he is the voice of Dobby the House-elf from Harry Potter). Then he got the chance to audition for a role that changed his career: that of Truman Capote, the famous writer, in Douglas Mcgrath’s version of the events that led to his non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood. “It was the first lead part I’d played on film or television,” says Jones. “It was the first time I’d filmed in America, the first time I’d played a real character. I remember a strong feeling of melancholy about halfway through the script as I read. I thought, ‘There’s no way they’re ever going to give me this part.’” But they did, and Jones is mesmerising in the role, capturing Capote’s manner of speaking and inner turmoil in a way that absolutely stands up to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in Capote. “Both hold up, both are important films, and both have stood the test of time, even if people take years to discover them.”
OLLIE WEEKS THE MIST (2007)
Infamous led almost immediately to a rare heroic role for Jones, as a supermarket worker who comes to the fore during an apocalyptic assault by all manner of awful beasties in Frank Darabont’s Stephen King adaptation. “I remember going to the premiere, and when I shot [one of the film’s major villains], the whooping and cheering that went on in the cinema!” recalls Jones. The most unlikely character turns out to be the gunman.” Not that he’s condoning gun violence, or the idolisation of Ollie just because he’s handy with a weapon. “That’s why the film is smart,” he adds. “It’s asking all those questions precisely.”
ARNIM ZOLA CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)/THE WINTER SOLDIER (2014)
As the evil Swiss scientist who aids and abets the Red Skull and later is responsible for turning Bucky Barnes into the Winter Soldier, Jones is having a blast as one of the first actors to set foot inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not that the MCU was quite what it is now back then. “I remember one of the producers explaining what the masterplan was and thinking, ‘Well, that’ll never happen!’” he laughs. Yet Marvel was the biggest show in town by the time he returned as Zola for The Winter Soldier, this time playing him as an intellect trapped inside a super-computer. Now that’s range. “The idea, in this montage of history, that he’s behind the course of history, was so great. It wasn’t the most challenging thing in the world,” he admits of his experience on a soundstage, piping lines through to Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, “but it was great fun.”
GILDEROY BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2012)
“The great miracle of cinema, as I think Hugh Grant said, is that the camera will see you having the right thought in your head,” says Jones of his approach to playing Gilderoy, a sound engineer who goes increasingly insane as he works on an Italian giallo in Peter Strickland’s surreal psychological horror. “That was something I grabbed hold of. It’s not always clear what Gilderoy is thinking, but I had to come up with my own, very real, very boring story of what was going on, a story that no-one will ever hear. Because although the film itself loops and repeats and cross-cuts and goes in and out of a dream, I had to have some sense of linear time. So I had a chart on the wall in my dressing room, which was my journey through the film.”
MR EVERSOLL JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)
Jones is only briefly in J.A. Bayona’s dino-sequel. But his avaricious auctioneer certainly makes an impact, not least in the film’s single funniest shot, which sees Mr Eversoll staring right into the face of his doom, an enraged and very hungry Indoraptor. Which proceeds to roar in his face, leaving Eversoll’s, erm, augmented hair flapping about in the breeze. “Around that time there were some great shots of Trump with his extraordinary
hair being pulled in different directions by the wind, and to a certain extent exposed,” laughs Jones. “We decided, not to make him Trump, but to give a bit of a nod to that kind of tycoon.” The final effect was achieved with the help of a wind machine plonked right in front of Jones’ face.
CHIEF FACTOR FIRST COW (2019)
As a pompous, arrogant Englishman who has no idea that the delicious oily cakes he buys from two local entrepreneurs are made from milk stolen from his own cow, Jones is hilarious and haughty in Kelly Reichardt’s beautifully shot period drama. “It was one of those things when you get a phone call and you just say yes, you don’t even really need to read the script because Kelly is so inimitable,” he says. “This evocation of early America is so exciting to be part of, and the idea of this Englishman slightly stranded out there, trying to preserve the tea-making ritual, is both comic and a great statement about the ludicrousness of the imperial spirit, in a way.”
UNCLE VANYA UNCLE VANYA (2020)
Jones was deep into a West End run of the legendary Chekhov play, playing the title character, when Covid bit deep. And that, he thought, was that. But an idea was struck to mount a filmed adaptation of the play, in front of an eerily empty theatre. “It was an amazing and emotional thing,” he says. “It wasn’t the play — the play’s in four acts, and we shot an act a day. I think everyone had enough experience of film to be able to scale the performances for the camera.” Jones has had his eye on playing Vanya, a beleaguered manager of an isolated Russian estate who begins to sense that he’s wasted his life, for some time. “I don’t have a long list of those roles,” he says. “But the play itself is so perfectly constructed, and the extraordinary thing Chekhov manages to achieve is this sense of time eating away at our opportunities or illusions about what we’ll achieve.”
UNCLE VANYA IS OUT NOW ON DVD AND BLU-RAY. FIRST COW IS ON MUBI FROM 9 JULY