Felicity Jones Interview

Felicity Jones has been a regular in period drama action on the small screen for many years, and within the last couple of years has made the move to full length cinema features. With starring roles in the likes of The Tempest and Cemetery Junction behind her, she talked to View’s Matthew Turner about her role in the snowboard Brit-com Chalet Girl, the joys of being silly in the Alps and a forthcoming project about the invention of the vibrator.
Well, Chalet Girl was quite an interesting project because it wasn't really like anything I'd encountered before and when I initially got it I suppose I thought this was actually quite a risk. And so, I was like, 'I can't do it – I'm not sure,’ you know, snowboarding. I suppose my career's been quite traditional and I've done quite a lot of period pieces and this was kind of something a bit more unusual.

But then I couldn't stop thinking about it and there was something about Kim and just the fact that I hadn't had that opportunity to play someone like her - that confidence and how witty she is. And I just suddenly thought, 'Actually, if I'm slightly intimidated by this it means I should do it because it means I'm taking a risk and you only can kind of achieve creative fulfilment if you take risks.' Well, I'd been skiing – I used to ski when I was younger but I'd never encountered the snowboard. And I think I over-estimated myself, because I thought, 'Oh, I'll be fine, I've been skiing, it's pretty much the same thing.' It's absolutely NOT. I would say snowboarding is a completely different beast and you spend so much time in pain and tears and blood in order to just get anywhere. Yes, exactly! I think I spent most of the time just sort of squirming about on the ground. Yes. In order to do something like this, I felt that to understand Kim I wanted to have a month of snowboarding before, because I wanted to be able to do all her stuff on the slopes, all her ground-work. So I went out and had six hour days of training and did that so that by the time we started filming I could do all the stuff apart from the air stunts. It's amazing. Just an incredible opportunity. And also it helps you to understand her, you know, learning to board and I think athletes have a very different sort of psychology than most normal people. And so the more I sort of immersed myself in that snowboarding world, the more I could understand how Kim would move and how she would respond to the world she gets plunged into. I think I have quite a few. What would be my favourite? I love it as soon as she encounters the Masdens and especially, one of my favourite moments is when Kim and Bill Nighy's character are walking towards the helicopter and there's just one line that I have and I think that's my favourite. He says something about sarcasm and I respond saying, “It's not the sarcasm, it's the irony, actually.” I just like that moment. Well, that's what I wanted, because from doing Cemetery Junction, I've always wanted to do more comedy. And actually, for an actor, making people laugh is sometimes more challenging than making them cry so, yes, I was just really keen to try it and I really liked it. Erm ... the hardest thing was probably clambering out of a hot tub with not very many clothes on at minus ten degrees. [Laughs] It doesn't get much worse than that!

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