Emilia Jones

The discipline of nine months of silence

Emilia Jones spent nine months learning American Sign Language before filming CODA in 2021. She didn't want to use interpreters during breaks on set. She also learned to handle a professional fishing boat off the coast of Massachusetts and took intensive singing lessons to shape her voice to the demands of Sian Heder's script.

The British industry already knew what she was capable of.

Her first professional steps came in 2011 with a small role in the movie One Day. She was barely eight years old when she stepped onto her first major film set. But her training didn't come from prestigious drama schools; it came from working directly in front of the camera on large-scale productions.

The daughter of singer and presenter Aled Jones, the actress grew up in a showbiz-oriented family environment in London. While that makes access to certain circles easier, scrutiny of her talent was constant from her stage debut in Shrek The Musical at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

In 2013, she appeared in the episode The Rings of Akhaten of the series Doctor Who. It was a key moment for casting directors in London to start noting her name on lists of projects with international appeal.

Netflix as a haven and her growth as an actress

In 2020, Locke & Key premiered on Netflix. Playing Kinsey Locke over three seasons gave her the financial stability to choose projects with more creative risk. That freedom translated into a search for scripts that moved away from typical commercial formulas.

It was not all an easy road.

During the filming of Brimstone in 2016, she had to face a hostile physical environment and an extremely dark script. That experience in the European western hardened her working method. Jones prefers shoots that demand real physical wear and tear over the excessive use of green screens.

In 2018, she starred in Ghostland under the direction of Pascal Laugier. Horror films allowed her to explore extreme registers of anxiety and fear that she would later apply to her more restrained dramatic work.

Betting on independent film paid off at the Sundance Film Festival.

Managing expectations in independent film

In 2023, Cat Person hit theaters and streaming platforms. The film sparked intense debate about consent and power dynamics in modern relationships. Jones played a college student trapped in an uncomfortable relationship and carried the psychological weight of a suffocating plot without relying on acting tricks.

That same year, she starred in Fairyland under the production of Sofia Coppola. The story is set in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. But her interest in characters based on real events didn't stop there.

In 2024, she starred in Winner, playing Reality Winner, the Air Force linguist who leaked classified documents about Russian interference in the U.S. elections. The shoot demanded absolute restraint to avoid political melodrama.

The total budget for CODA was $10 million, and Apple TV+ paid $25 million for its distribution rights after its premiere in 2021.