Cable movie role for Ashley Jones is job of a Lifetime
The top priority for any actor is not that different from being a baker, traffic cop or TV critic. The important thing is to find a way to just keep working. In the case of Ashley Jones, her steady employment has been accomplished by series regular roles on the daytime dramas “General Hospital,” “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” combined with parts in movies, particularly productions for the Lifetime cable channel.
Her most recent foray into the channel known for making movies that focus on women is the thriller “You Killed My Mother,” which airs at 8 p.m. Friday on Lifetime. Jones plays a doctor who has to make a tough decision regarding a patient needing a liver transplant. That decision enrages an emotionally disturbed teen (Carlena Britch) who attacks a hospital nurse. After her release from a mental institution years later, the young woman plots an elaborate scheme of revenge.
Working on the cable movie not only helped Jones take care of her acting priority, but it also gave her a chance to work on a project that shot quickly, giving her more time with her children. Plus, she just likes working for Lifetime. Jones has starred in a number of Lifetime movies, like “A Teacher’s Crime,” “Dead at 17,” “Secrets from Her Past,” “A Sister’s Revenge” and “The Secret Sex Life of a Single Mom.”
“You have to go where the work is and Lifetime does that. It’s a network that caters more toward women so they have more roles for women, especially women my age,” Jones, 41, says. “They have roles that I’m drawn to. When I talk to women — and men — who are similar age bracket to me, they tell me they often have the same problems as the people in the films.”
Granted, Jones doesn’t hear from a lot of people who have been the focus of an elaborate revenge scheme by an emotionally disturbed woman. But there’s more to her role in “You Killed My Mother” than that. She gets to play a professional who has found success in her field while still finding time at home to be a loving and caring mother. There is a little sleuthing that goes on as the scheme begins to unfold, but not much more than making her character somewhere between naturally curious and a snoop.
Lifetime movies are made very quickly, but that’s no problem for Jones after all her years working in the hyper-speed world of daytime dramas. She recalls a time on “General Hospital” when she had to shoot scenes for four different episodes — covering 80 pages of dialogue — in one day. Her daytime drama background makes the quick pacing for a Lifetime movie — where seven pages will be shot in a day — far more familiar and comfortable to her than the more traditional lumbering style of feature films or even primetime TV shows.
“A Lifetime movie shoots in about three to four weeks,” Jones says. “That’s another plus about getting to do these movies, because you can do it on your hiatus from your series. Also, if you have a child (Jones has two), it makes it a little easier cause you can make the movie and then stay at home with your kids for weeks at a time after the filming is done.”