FIRING UP Talented British actress Felicity Jones is finally in the spotlight.

Taking the lead in the latest Dan Brown blockbuster, Inferno, talented British actress Felicity Jones is finally in the spotlight. By Jane Albert.

It’s comforting to hear that an actress of Felicity Jones’s calibre can still become star-struck. It was day one of the shoot for the screen adaptation of Dan Brown’s latest book, Inferno, and Jones was sitting in the make-up chair when she heard a familiar Californian brogue emanating from behind her.

“I had to pinch myself – I was sitting in a make-up bus with Tom Hanks!” she says, laughing. “I could hear him chatting away to his make-up artist; his voice is so well known.”

It’s an endearing comment from Jones – in fact, there’s much to like about this British film and theatre luminary who, despite an impressive array of productions and awards to her name, tends to fly under the radar.

Audiences will recall her sympathetic, understated performance as the longsuffering first wife of scientist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) in the 2014 biopic The Theory of Everything. Jones received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal, which led one reviewer to note she was “a consistently brilliant actor who needs a breakthrough”.

No doubt her lead character in the upcoming blockbuster Inferno will place her squarely before an international mainstream audience, although mass appeal is the last thing on Jones’s mind. “I look for something challenging in the role,” she says on the phone from London. “I like to do something I haven’t done before.”

When Jones read screenwriter David Koepp’s script for Inferno, the latest addition in the billion-dollar film franchise, she was instantly drawn to the role of medical doctor Sienna Brooks and the contemporary issues the story addresses. “I loved David’s writing, how quick-minded Sienna was, how articulate she was. And the role was going to be fun and enjoyable to play,” Jones says.

The mystery thriller opens in a Florence hospital, where internationally renowned symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) wakes to find himself suffering a nasty head gash and amnesia. The film sees Langdon desperately attempting to solve a trail of clues to prevent a brilliant but egomaniacal bioengineer releasing a deadly virus designed to cause mass death to combat overpopulation worldwide. Jones plays Langdon’s accomplice, the bright but enigmatic Dr Brooks.

It’s the first time Jones has worked with Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, but credits his gentle approach with putting her at ease before the camera, particularly when performing opposite an actor of Hanks’s experience.

“Ron makes you feel so comfortable. He’s obviously an actor himself, so he totally understands the nerves you have and that you’re very exposed on your first day on set,” she says, adding that they’d done a readthrough in New York before shifting to Budapest for rehearsal, so once the cameras were rolling, she had a good grasp of the screenplay. “Although Tom and Ron have so much experience between them, they were really open to new ideas and collaborations, and really fun to work with.”

Jones studied English, not drama, at Oxford University, but threw herself into every student play she could find. Theatre was her first love, so it was perhaps unsurprising to learn she famously turned down a role in 2012 fantasy Mirror Mirror opposite Julia Roberts, as she had already accepted a part in Luise Miller at the Donmar Warehouse in London.

It was this instinct, too, that saw her sign on to the upcoming fantasy drama A Monster Calls, a screen adaptation directed by The Impossible’s Juan Antonio Bayona, in which a young teen turns to a mythical tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) to help him make sense of the emotional turbulence overtaking his life as he loses his mother ( Jones) to cancer.

“A few of my friends have lost parents through cancer and [the book] really helped me understand some of their trauma and pain, in such a sophisticated way,” she says. “I don’t think anyone has read that book and not been affected by it; it was definitely one of the reasons I wanted to be a part of it.” Inferno is in cinemas from October 13. A Monster Calls is released nationally on December 1.