Annabelle Dexter-Jones

Heritage as a starting point

Annabelle Dexter-Jones grew up watching rock legends and New York fashion figures fill the living room of her home. She was born in London in 1986, but her identity belongs entirely to Manhattan. She is the daughter of guitarist Mick Jones and writer Ann Dexter-Jones, which places her at the center of one of the most influential families in Anglo-American pop culture.

Before stepping in front of a movie camera, she worked as a model and designer. But fashion was too static an environment for someone looking for a storytelling voice of her own. In 2012 she appeared in the short film The Dirty Secrets, and that's where she began to realize her place was in acting.

New York was always her real-life setting.

Her training didn't follow the typical path of a conventional drama school. She drew on direct observation on film sets and on an intellectual curiosity that led her to write her own scripts. In 2017 she premiered her first work as a director, titled Cecile on the Phone, at the Sundance Film Festival. The piece explored modern neurosis with a carefully crafted aesthetic.

The assault on prestige television

The industry began to see her differently when she showed she could carry the weight of complex productions. In 2017 she joined the cast of The Meyerowitz Stories, directed by Noah Baumbach, where she shared the screen with actors of the caliber of Adam Sandler and Dustin Hoffman. It was a small role, but it helped casting directors take note of her name.

And then came the role of Naomi Pierce.

In 2019 she joined the second season of Succession on HBO. Her character was an heiress to a media empire with addiction problems and an aristocratic cynicism that fit the show's tone perfectly. She built an electric chemistry with Jeremy Strong that gave Kendall Roy's storyline the emotional depth it needed.

That television work allowed her to step out of the New York independent film niche. But she never abandoned her roots. In 2018 she had already worked on Under the Silver Lake, an instant cult film where the mystery and atmosphere of Los Angeles enveloped everything.

Directing and new screens

Dexter-Jones's career doesn't follow a straight line. She alternates big-budget projects with visual experiments where risk is the priority. In 2023 she joined the world of Ryan Murphy in American Horror Story: Delicate. There, she played Sonia Shawcross and Adeline Harding, a dual acting challenge that demanded extremely high technical precision to distinguish the two characters on screen.

Because controlling her image is one of her professional obsessions.

In 2023 she also appeared in the film Helen’s Dead, a mix of mystery and dark comedy that moved away from the intense dramas that made her known. She prefers projects where the script has rough edges and the characters are not easy for the average viewer to pin down.

Her name now appears in the production credits of several projects seeking independent funding in the United States. She doesn't just wait for calls from her agent. She writes and looks for stories about the discomfort of the upper class and urban isolation.

In 2024 she joined the cast of the comedy Bad Shabbos, directed by Daniel Robbins, a project shot on a tight budget on real locations in New York City.