If you don’t have a fear of heights, The Aeronauts might just give you one. A handsome and invigorating adventure film set in 1820s England, it’s partly based on true stories and stars Eddie Redmayne as James Glaisher, a pioneering meteorologist whose desire to ascend heavenwards is driven by a wish to better understand and predict the weather.

To get up there he’ll need the help of an expert balloonist and when he first meets Amelia Rennes (Felicity Jones), he’s not impressed. For she’s a show-woman who cartwheels into the arena on the morning of their flight and does tricks for the audience, knowing well that even science depends on sponsorship. But she has her secret sorrows, and this mismatched pair will grow closer during a record-breaking but reckless and dangerous flight.

Felicity Jones is wonderful in the film, and nods modestly as I tell her so when we meet. Petite, neat and sporting a boho-ish red dress, she explains what attracted her to the project in the first place.

“I loved the combination of it being a period drama but not feeling like a period drama at all. It had this immense modernity to it and, by the end of the film, you don’t know where they are or when they were, and you don’t really care – it becomes a story about survival.”

In the British press, which ought to have better things to worry about, there’s been much grumbling about the fact that, while Eddie Redmayne’s character is based on a real man, Amelia’s is a construct; some of the heroic exploits she undertakes in the film were performed on a flight with the real James Glaisher by a man.

This, however, is a film, not a History Channel documentary, and there were plenty of female aeronauts who achieved similar feats.

“The biggest inspiration for my character, Amelia, is this woman called Sophie Blanchard, who was this quite extraordinary 18th-century aeronaut. A lot of Blanchard’s story is Amelia’s story, and she used to love flying solo. She used to fly at night and set fireworks off and all that sort of stuff – she was a bit of a wild cat.”

Felicity Jones loves playing powerful women who have made a big impact. She talks about her roller-coaster life, being a ‘constant news-checker’, and the fun of winding up her co-stars

The actor Felicity Jones, judged by dreary national statistics, is neither tall nor short: she’s a bang-on average 5ft 3in. Measured by the slightly looser gauge in her imagination, though, Jones is a colossus, a towering church-and-steeple of a human being. She’s got a basketballer’s reach and a bodyguard’s doorway-filling bulk. Even in flat-soled shoes, this 36-year-old can go around plucking stranded cats out of trees. “Without a doubt,” she says, “I’ve always felt bigger and taller than I am.”

In the past few years especially, the actor has made good use of this inside-outside differential. Whether it was playing the pioneering American judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2018’s On the Basis of Sex, or earning an Oscar nomination as Jane Hawking, Stephen’s formidable first wife, in 2015’s The Theory of Everything, Jones has had an instinctive sense for the pathos and humour in characters whose physical slightness tends to trick others into overlooking them. In a Star Wars movie, 2016’s Rogue One, she played a watchful and almost childlike guerrilla who ultimately tough-nutted past dozens of baddies to bring down an army. In her coming movie, The Aeronauts, she plays a 19th-century balloonist – a figure of fun to the scientists and flight enthusiasts of Victorian London, until she has to rescue one of them from death at 37,000ft.

Jones meets me for lunch in a pub in north London. She is early, and pumped for some roast chicken. When our meals arrive she sets about eating and talking at an equally brisk clip. Although this can lead to accidents (she points out a stain on her sweatshirt), Jones is a cool bean and has that performer’s knack, just about inexplicable to me, of chatting away fluently even after forking in a mouthful of drumstick meat.

She’s interesting and eloquent about her job, stiffer when it comes to talking about herself and her personal life. First we talk about the wider world, which seems, most weeks, to be falling to pieces. “There was that old-fashioned idea, years and years ago,” she says, “of a movie star who was this godlike being who never deigned to talk about anything mortal. But that’s long gone.” All for the better, she thinks. “I’m a constant news-checker. You can’t not be, now. There’s such chaos in the world. It seems to be our duty to be informed, to be abreast of things. Particularly in my work, now, I’m not shy of things that have a strong ideology, that are political.”

In The Aeronauts, the actor stars as a female balloonist – a role that was gender-flipped for the film. Speaking to Stylist on the eve of its release, Felicity Jones explains the timely message within the movie.

There’s a scene in The Aeronauts, the hot air balloon historical thriller – yes, you read that right – that reunites Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne onscreen, that appears designed specifically to make women’s blood boil.

In it, Amelia Wren (Jones) sweeps through The Royal Society, Victorian skirts rustling over the flagstones, in search of James Glaisher (Redmayne). She comes bearing bad news: despite promising that she would take him further into the skies than any previous balloon expedition, Amelia feels unable to complete the mission. She is still reeling from the emotional impact of the tragic death of her husband in a balloon accident a few years prior. Despite James’ noble pursuit – Redmayne’s James is a meteorologist keen to document the science of the weather, imagine Newt Scamander meets Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow – Amelia believes she cannot undertake the mission, and she wants to deliver her decision in person.

Only, she can’t. On account of her gender.

“We have a policy in regards to the fairer sex,” one Royal Society member huffs, balking at the very sight of her. In short – no women allowed. Get out.

This scene, coupled with the many in On The Basis Of Sex in which Jones – as trailblazing legal authority Ruth Bader Ginsburg – was the only woman in the room, was cause for the actor to reflect back on her own career.

Despite it being a successful and satisfying one, filled with Oscar nominations (for The Theory of Everything), cult favourite romantic comedies (Chalet Girl) and epic blockbusters (Rogue One), Jones admits that she has “often” been the lone female voice on all-male projects.

“On film sets, I would be one of about 60 guys on a regular basis,” she says. “The more I see it breaking down, the more I feel a more comfortable working experience [is coming] where we have parity, and we can all do good work.”

She adds: “It has been a very male-dominated industry, and there are so many macho aspects to it… But I think things are changing. I think technology is a huge part of that change – there’s so many different ways of telling stories now, and getting a voice across that has never been allowed before because it was such a closed industry. And it was, it was rife with bullying and hierarchy, and I’m very, very happy to see that breaking down and something new emerging.”

Welcome to Beauty Bytes: a place where I chat to celebrities about all things beauty – from their favourite products, to their biggest beauty disasters. Plus I grill them on everything from their social media habits to their favourite cheat meals. You know, all the important and essentials things that we need to know about.

As we’re heading into the colder months and our skin is taking a battering from plummeting temperatures outside and central heating inside, I wanted to chat to someone who’s nailing their winter beauty regime right now. Who sprang to mind? Actress Felicity Jones, who’s pretty vocal about her love for a simple but effective routine. We met up to chat about exactly that, as well as how to care for coloured hair and how to get the perfect cat-eye flick.

Felicity Jones lifted the lid on the”gruelling” training sessions she had with an acrobatics specialist ahead of filming her latest movie.

The Oscar nominee, 36, has reunited with her The Theory of Everything co-star Eddie Redmayne for The Aeronauts, in which they play a pair of Victorian adventurers risking their lives in a record-breaking balloon flight.

The role required Jones to carry out stunt work while floating at 2,000 feet in a replica gas balloon and the star said that practising daring trapeze and rope work beforehand helped her get into character.

“I was really fortunate to work with an acrobat,” she told Standard Online. “She’s done a lot of aerial work, which is like what the Cirque du Soleil do.

“So I would take myself off to Hammersmith where she trains and we would do all sorts of trapeze work.

“They have these long ropes hanging from the ceiling and [the training] would be working out how to climb yourself up; you do these wraps around your feet so you can be suspended [in the air].

“My way into the character was very much, ‘If I can feel as brave as she does in the air, then hopefully I can make it work’.”

Once filming started, however, Jones had to make do without support ropes while climbing up from the balloon’s basket into its hoop in order to retain a “very naturalistic” style.

“We wanted to keep it feeling very real,” she said. “Often I’d be doing a stunt scene and I’d be getting help – you have these ropes coming off you and you can have support on those to make it easier.

“We’d do a couple of takes and it would look terrible [on film] and then Tom Harper, the director, would shout over ‘Lose the help!’

Netflix has acquired nearly all worldwide rights to “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” a romantic drama starring Felicity Jones and Shailene Woodley. Financial terms of the deal are not known, but the pact includes domestic rights.

StudioCanal, which put together the picture, will release the film in the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. StudioCanal’s output partner Svensk will distribute the film in Scandinavia. The company will be selling the film in China, where Netflix does not operate.

Based on the best-selling novel by Jojo Moyes, “The Last Letter From Your Lover” is a dual-narrative love story that follows Ellie (Jones), a young journalist in contemporary London who uncovers a series of love letters recounting a star-crossed affair in the 1960s. That romance between Jennifer Stirling (Woodley) and Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner) is so intense that Ellie becomes obsessed with finding the couple and discovering how their story ended. Moyes’ book is a favorite of many readers, having sold over three million copies worldwide.

Augustine Frizzell (“Euphoria”) is directing the film from a script by Nick Payne and Esta Spalding. The cast also includes Nabhaan Rizwan, Joe Alwyn, and Ncuti Gatwa.

Pete Czernin and Graham Broadbent of Blueprint Pictures produced the picture along with Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss of The Film Farm.

Jones is an Oscar nominee for “The Theory of Everything” and the star of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” She will next be seen in the adventure film “The Aeronauts” opposite her “The Theory of Everything” co-star Eddie Redmayne. Woodley recently appeared in the second season of “Big Little Lies” and starred in “The Fault in Our Stars.” Her upcoming projects include the romantic drama “Endings, Beginnings.” Both actresses also served as executive producers on “The Last Letter From Your Lover.”

Principal photography is currently underway in Mallorca and will soon move to the U.K. A release date has yet to be announced. [Source]