«NOn I can do anything but choose movies who have something interesting to say. They must be, yes, fun and pleasant to see each other, but the subjects who have an urgency, the potential to get to everyone, attract me. Then they are carriers of ideas and humanity all the better. Cinema and television have great power, they can influence what we think if not directly, certainly on an unconscious level ». So he told me Felicity Jones in our last interview for Midnight Skythe science fiction drama directed by George Clooney, in 2020.
The English actress of Like Crazy, the theory of everything and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story He still believes it. Chiara, direct and almost hasty, Jones answers questions without turns of words, if ever ladies, goes to the bone. Time to be lost does not, with two children of 4 and 2 years, during the campaign for The brutalistthe film by Brady Corbet nominated for 10 Oscars (including Felicity Jones for best assets), winner of three Golden Globe and the silver lion directed by the Venice exhibition.
Felicy Jones with The brutalist towards the Oscar
It is the story of the Jewish architect László Tóth – played by Adrien Brody – escaped the Holocaust and emigrated in 1947 to the United States, leaving his wife Erzsébet behind him (the character played by Felicity) who, tested in the physicist and soul Finally he will reach him. At the interview on Zoom from London, Felicity appears without a thread of makeup, the hair loose on the shoulders, a simple black shirt. The only habit, a ring with a small stone at the left ring finger. We haven’t seen each other for four years. Since then she has become a second time a second time, and she shot this film-monstre (3 hours and 34 minutes), for many critics an authentic masterpiece “on the American experience”. A company full of emotional disturbances for her and Adrien Brody.
How did you prepare for the role of Erzsébet Tóth, the wife of the visionary architect commissioned by an American tycoon to design a symbol building?
I had a long time to think about it, and I talked about it with Brady Corbet for two years before starting shooting. The film seemed, already at the beginning, an almost impossible company, then immediately continuous interruptions, actors and funding disappeared. A long and tortuous path, Covid also contributed to exacerbating an already complicated situation.
For her there was one more difficulty: she had to act with a Hungarian accent. He studied phonetics, grammar: what did he feel to express himself in a language not his?
I think it’s like a musician: when he plays a song he cannot focus on every single note. I fought against a thousand fears, practical, and worked hard in countless sessions with the diction teacher to grasp every shade of the accent and, above all, to find the authentic voice of another woman. I had to be able to understand who she, her experiences, was a real challenge to play a character who meets only in the middle of the film, even if in reality it has been present since the beginning, and we hear the voice, we read the letters . We look forward to seeing her appear, let’s try the same anxiety as László.
Erzsébet is a strong, tenacious woman, has faith and an unwavering optimism, despite her atrocious past. Has he managed to identify himself?
I must say that over the years I have learned the art of separating the character from myself. I like to transform myself, and in the case of Erzsébet, putting a wig was an effective stratagem to become her. Erzsébet always looks forward, going back is excluded. We guess its immense trauma even if the film does not mention the details. It is as if it were disconnected from herself and looked at herself from afar, as she too a character beyond the physical being.
Yet she underwent a metamorphosis in the film right from a physical point of view.
It is always complex to interpret the trauma of another, but for this role it was essential to do it. I had to understand what could be successful in the concentration camp, enter his mental space. Adrien and I had to lose weight, I had to make Erzsébet’s experience credible and true that had literally suffered hunger for a long time. So it was a dual experience, a technical and emotional combination to find and create the character.
Felicity Jones, 41 years old. He is candidate for Oscar 2025 for the best supporting actress for The Brutalist: he plays Erzsébet Tóth, wife of the architect László Tóth, fleeing Europe after the Second World War. (Universal Cinema)
The Italian origins of Felicity Jones
His family has Tuscan roots. In the film an important scene is shot in the Cave di Carrara where László goes in search of materials. Did you evoked family memories?
Certain. My great -grandmother came from Italy in the Midlands where I grew up, and it was a fundamental presence in my training. He only spoke Italian and only ate Italian dishes; Unfortunately none of us inherited the language. I chew a few words, but one day I will learn it: my husband says that when I am in Italy I speak English with the Italian accent, it is already something! (Laughs)
During the Covid period she said to me: “Ours is a time when we challenge the unknown, I just hope that things can go better.” Then improved?
(Bursts into a nice laugh). How to answer? Let me think. We continue to live a technological revolution that is radically changing everything. It has an immense impact on our life and it seems to me that we don’t control on this thing …
In The brutalistLászló arrived in America in the late 1940s. The impact is dramatic, it meets social and cultural resistance, it is certainly not welcomed with open arms. This remains a current and open question everywhere, even today. He is also in England, where do you live?
The survival of those who migrate into a new context is certainly a fundamental part of the film, and I don’t speak only of physical survival, but about the possibility of keeping their principles, dreams and convictions. The director in Venice explained that the film is “an escape from fascism, to end up in the arms of capitalism”. Now in the western world we are navigating in the most extreme capitalism.
Felicity Jones at the photocall of “The Brutti” at the Barbican Center on January 15, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images)
You have always shown a lot of consistency in choosing your projects. Was it difficult?
You arrive at a point in your career where you realize that no choice is perfect or ideal, even if it appeared in the moment you made the decision. I have to feel comfortable with the story I am part of. After the pandemic I feel even more responsible in this sense. There are a lot of information and many things to see, to read, it is a continuous bombing, and I try to contribute with projects that go right to the point.
14 years have passed since the time of Like Crazythe film presented at the Sundance Festival that made her known to the American public. I remember her as a girl with a contagious enthusiasm. And today?
In a sense, having a family and children to pull up made my job even more important. I enjoy it and I enjoy it more than once, because I have less neurosis and anxiety. Today everything is easier and more beautiful.
Much will depend on having two children …
Yes, a 4 -year -old boy and a girl of 2. When your time is limited you have to use it wisely. Today I feel more courageous. It is as if creatively I had opened up to a new world, the accumulated experience made me discover unpublished audacity, beautiful to live, never experienced before.
And what can you tell us about Adrien Brody?
From the first meeting on Zoom, there has been a perfect harmony among us; Then we met on the set and that immediate connection helped us to bring out everything we could in five weeks of work, in a complex and unique film. Adrien is a ferociously sincere, unstoppable, in an admirable way, in his search for truth.
I woman © RESERVED REPRODUCTION