You may have heard friends describe "The Theory Of Everything" as "that Stephen Hawking movie," but it's equally the powerful story of his wife Jane Hawking, who was his lover, caretaker and confidant for decades.
Felicity Jones, who plays Jane in the film, spoke to HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski on Tuesday about the privilege of playing a role with such depth, particularly in a genre that doesn't always explore the full experience of female characters.
That's what was so great when I read the script, because sometimes you hear the word 'biopic' and you think, 'That's not going to fare well for the female part.' Often they can be -- there's not really much to get your teeth into. But with this screenplay, I loved that it was exploring her as a wife and a mother, but also it was this woman's academic identity, but also her sexual identity. And the fact that three-quarters of the way through the film, it's this woman who falls in love with two men for very different reasons, and it's quite a complicated situation, but I hadn't seen that kind of unconventional situation in a screenplay before.
Actually playing the part -- and meeting Jane herself -- was as remarkable as reading the script, Jones said.
"Once I met Jane particularly, she's such an extraordinary woman -- so complicated and nuanced, and has this amazing sort of humor and an incredible un-sentimentality toward life," she said. "Her and Stephen were in a very difficult situation, but there was such courage all the time. So I felt like there was a lot for me to mine and get out of playing her."
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