菲丽希提·琼斯：好莱坞绽放中的英伦玫瑰

    Not only does Felicity Jones star opposite Tom Hanks in this week’s “Inferno,” she’s set to play Jyn Erso in the upcoming film “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” giving us another female lead in the franchise.

    The film takes place before “A New Hope” and will tell the story of the Rebels who risked their lives to get the plans for the Death Star.

    Last year Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her work in “The Theory of Everything.”

    The force may be strong with her, but it’s been a long road to the Hollywood hills for the 33-year-old actress from Britain.

    Why does her face look vaguely familiar?

    To an entire generation in Britain, Jones is probably best known as a right teenage, err, witch. In the kids TV show “The Worst Witch,” Jones was the original Ethel Hallow, a mischievous little madame who made it her business to keep Mildred Hubble in toil and trouble.

    She only stayed for one season though, eventually reprising the role in spin-off “Wierdsister College” years later.

    Where on earth has she been for the past decade?

    To put it simply, doing a lof of TV and theater in Britain. That’s probably why many people will know her as “that girl from that thing.”

    In 2003 she joined ex-”EastEnder” and “Doc Martin” star Joe Absolom for BBC’s TV series “Servants” before going on to walk the period drama line for quite some time.

    Roles in TV drama “Northanger Abbey,” the “Brideshead Revisited” remake, the BBC’s five-part adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and short-lived drama “Cape Wrath” kept her busy from 2000 to 2009. She even turned up in “Doctor Who” — yet another period role, in an episode about Agatha Christie.

    That still doesn’t explain how she ended up in

    Hollywood …

    We weren’t kidding when we said her big screen star was a while in the ascendance.

    Jones joined the cast of Ricky Gervais’ “Cemetary Junction” in 2010, but it was her role in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner “Like Crazy” that finally gave her a bit of a well deserved break.

    From there she went on to star opposite Helen Mirren in that gender-reversed version of “The Tempest” and make a few more indepedant movies before getting in on the mainstream comic book action as Felicia Hardy in “Amazing Spider-Man 2.”

    She then spent months learning to snowboard for the delightfully cheesy “Chalet Girl.” Then there was coming-of-age drama “Albatross” with “Downton Abbey” alumnus Jessica Brown Findlay.

    Ticking every period drama box along the way, so she is. (SD-Agencies)