Felicity Jones

Jane Hawking

Felicity Jones won the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize in 2011 for Drake Doremus’ romantic drama Like Crazy. The picture also won the Grand Jury Prize. Ms. Jones subsequently went on to win the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor, the National Board of Review Award for Best Breakthrough Performer, and the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer. 

In 2013, Ms. Jones was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman; starring opposite Mr. Fiennes, she portrayed Charles Dickens’ beloved Nelly Ternan.

Ms. Jones also starred in Julie Taymor’s reimagining of The Tempest, opposite Helen Mirren; Niall McCormick’s Albatross, for which was a British Independent Film Award nominee as Best Supporting Actress; Breathe In, reteaming her with director Drake Doremus, opposite Guy Pearce; Phil Traill’s romantic comedy Chalet Girl, starring in the title role; Donald Rice’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding; Stephen Frears’ Chéri; Julian Jarrold’s Brideshead Revisited; Tanya Wexler’s Hysteria; Shimmy Marcus’ SoulBoy; Baillie Walsh’s Flashbacks of a Fool, as the younger incarnation of the character played by Claire Forlani; and Cemetery Junction, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Most recently, she appeared as the mysterious Felicia Hardy in Marc Webb’s blockbuster The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Ms. Jones also has extensive stage experience. She starred in Michael Grandage’s Domar Warehouse staging of Luise Miller, earning rave reviews for her performance in the title role. At the Royal Court Theatre, she starred in That Face under the direction of Jeremy Herrin. Her performance in Mr. Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse revival of The Chalk Garden, in which she starred with Margaret Tyzack and Penelope Wilton, earned her an Evening Standard Award nomination for Outstanding Newcomer.

Her television credits include the children’s drama The Worst Witch, reprising her character of Ethel Hallow as a series regular on Weirdsister College. Ms. Jones appeared on an episode of Doctor Who, alongside David Tennant as The Doctor, and on an episode of Girls, opposite Richard E. Grant and Jemima Kirke; and starred in the series Servants and Meadowlands (a.k.a. Cape Wrath).

Among her telefilm credits are Northanger Abbey, based on the Jane Austen novel, directed by Jon Jones; Sir David Hare’s Page Eight and Salting the Battlefield, both opposite Bill Nighy; and The Diary of Anne Frank, in which she portrayed Anne Frank’s sister Margot and was again directed by Mr. Jones.

She has also made her mark in radio, narrating as Emma Grundy in the popular BBC Radio 4 show The Archers. Also for the network, she has performed in recordings of Watership Down and Mansfield Park.

Ms. Jones’ upcoming movies include Rupert Goold’s True Story, with James Franco and Jonah Hill; Eran Creevy’s Autobahn, alongside Nicholas Hoult, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Sir Ben Kingsley; and Juan Antonio Bayona’s much-anticipated drama A Monster Calls, also for Focus Features.

Charlie Cox

Jonathan Hellyer Jones

With his fellow actors from the Boardwalk Empire cast, Charlie Cox shared a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2012 for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series; the group was nominated for the Award again in 2013, following the conclusion of Mr. Cox’s two seasons on the HBO show as Irish immigrant and crime soldier Owen Slater. 

Mr. Cox was born in London and received his training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He made his West End stage debut in Harold Pinter’s The Lover and The Collection at the Comedy Theatre, directed by Jamie Lloyd. His other stage credits include Heinrich von Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, playing the title character in the Donmar Warehouse production adapted by Dennis Kelly and directed by Jonathan Munby.

He made his feature film debut in Matthew Parkhill’s Dot the I, alongside Gael García Bernal and Tom Hardy. His early films included Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons; and Lasse Hallström’s Casanova, starring Heath Ledger. 

His breakout performance was in the lead role of Tristan Thorn in Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust, based on the Neil Gaiman novel. Mr. Cox starred opposite Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, and Michelle Pfeiffer in the fantasy adventure. 

Among his other movies are Roland Joffé’s There Be Dragons; Simon Shore’s Things to Do Before You’re 30; Glorious 39, alongside Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, and The Theory of Everything star Eddie Redmayne for writer/director Stephen Poliakoff; and Charles Martin Smith’s Stone of Destiny, in which Mr. Cox starred as Scottish folk hero Ian Hamilton.

He guest-starred in the very first episode of Downton Abbey; and starred as Ishmael in Mike Barker’s epic miniseries Moby Dick, opposite William Hurt and Ethan Hawke.

Mr. Cox is currently at work on Marvel’s eagerly anticipated series Daredevil, to premiere via Netflix in 2015, in which he stars as Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer who fights injustice in court and also on the streets as the costumed hero Daredevil. Deborah Ann Woll, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elden Henson, and Rosario Dawson round out the cast of the show.

Emily Watson

Beryl Wilde

One of the entertainment industry’s most acclaimed actresses, Emily Watson came to the world film community’s attention for her memorable performance in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, which was her first movie. She received Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and BAFTA Award nominations; won the New York Film Critics Circle award, National Society of Film Critics award, and the Felix Award for Best Actress; and was named British Newcomer of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. 

Ms. Watson was again nominated in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and BAFTA Awards, and at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, for her portrayal of real-life classical cellist Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie, opposite Rachel Griffiths and directed by Anand Tucker. The performance also earned her the British Independent Film Award (BIFA) for Best Actress.

Her other films include Philip Saville’s Metroland, opposite Christian Bale; Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer; Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock; Alan Parker’s Angela’s Ashes; Alan Rudolph’s Trixie; Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love; Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon; John Hillcoat’s The Proposition; Richard E. Grant’s Wah-Wah; Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s Corpse Bride, in voiceover; Julian Fellowes’ Separate Lies, with Tom Wilkinson; Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York; Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls; Jim Loach’s Oranges and Sunshine, for which she was an Australian Film Institute Award nominee and a Film Critics Circle of Australia Award winner as Best Actress; Steven Spielberg’s War Horse; Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, also for Focus Features and Working Title Films; Some Girl(s), adapted by Neil LaBute from his play and directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer; Brian Percival’s The Book Thief; Ama Asante’s Belle; and Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the ensemble honored with the top prize of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

She was recently again a Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award nominee, for her performance opposite Dominic West in the miniseries Appropriate Adult. Her portrayal of Janet Leach in the real-life tale also earned Ms. Watson a BAFTA Award. 

In 2015, she will be seen in several new films including Alejandro Monteverde’s WWII drama Little Boy, with David Henrie, Michael Rapaport, and Tom Wilkinson; and Baltasar Kormákur’s epic Everest, also for Working Title Films. 

A veteran of the London stage, Ms. Watson’s theatre credits include Three Sisters, The Lady from the Sea, and The Children’s Hour at the Royal National Theatre. She has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in such productions as Jovial Crew, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well That Ends Well, and The Changeling. In the fall of 2002, she starred at the Donmar Warehouse in two shows concurrently, Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, both directed by Sam Mendes. These critically lauded productions also were staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City.

Simon McBurney

Frank Hawking

Director, actor, and writer Simon McBurney is one of the most innovative and influential artists working in theatre today. He was the recipient of the Olivier, Evening Standard, and London Critics Circle Awards for Best Play for A Disappearing Number, which played at the Barbican Theatre in London.

The co-founder of the troupe Complicité (originally named Théâtre de Complicité), Mr. McBurney has written, directed and acted in more than forty productions for the company. New York audiences have seen his stagings and adaptations of The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, at the 1996 Lincoln Center Festival; The Chairs, which received six 1998 Tony Award nominations; The Street of Crocodiles, at the 1998 Lincoln Center Festival; The Noise of Time, at Lincoln Center in collaboration with The Emerson String Quartet in 2000, and again in 2003; Mnemonic, which won three Lucille Lortel Awards including Unique Theatrical Experience of 2001; 2002’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, produced with Tony Randall’s National Actors Theatre, starring Al Pacino; The Elephant Vanishes, at the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival; and the 2008-2009 Broadway revival of All My Sons, starring John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest. 

He collaborated with Russian composer Alexander Raskatov on an opera adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novella A Dog’s Heart, staged at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam and the ENO (English National Opera) in London’s West End in 2010.

Mr. McBurney is the recipient of the 2008 Berlin Academy of Arts Konrad Wolf Prize for outstanding multi-disciplinary artists. Also in 2008, he became the first non-Japanese director to receive the Yomiuri Theatre Awards Grand Prize, for his staging of Shun-kin.

As an actor, he performs extensively in film and television. Films have included Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money, opposite Frances McDormand; Brian Gilbert’s Tom & Viv; Bill Forsyth’s Being Human; Martha Fiennes’ Onegin; Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things; Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate, with Denzel Washington; Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland, alongside Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker; Chris Weitz’s The Golden Compass; Saul Dibb’s The Duchess, opposite Keira Knightley; Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies and Robin Hood; David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, as the voice of Kreacher; Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight; also for Focus Features, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre; and, also for Focus Features and Working Title Films, Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In television, he starred in The Borgias opposite Jeremy Irons; in Rev., opposite Tom Hollander; and in the upcoming miniseries The Casual Vacancy, which is based on J.K. Rowling’s novel.

David Thewlis

Dennis Sicama

Actor, writer, and director David Thewlis is well-known to filmgoers for his cinematic collaborations with filmmaker Mike Leigh and for his thrilling adventures with a boy wizard. 

The latter encompassed five of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter movies, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and then David Yates, respectively, in which Mr. Thewlis portrayed Professor Remus Lupin.

He starred for Mr. Leigh in the short film The Short & Curlies and then the feature Life is Sweet. For his performance as Johnny in the writer/director’s Naked, Mr. Thewlis was voted Best Actor at the Cannes International Film Festival; was named Best Actor by the National Society of Film Critics, the Evening Standard British Film Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle; and won the London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year.

His many other films as actor include David Caffrey’s Divorcing Jack, for which he received a British Independent Film Award nomination; Christine Edzard’s Little Dorrit; Louis Malle’s Damage; Caroline Thompson’s Black Beauty; Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse; Michael Hoffman’s Restoration; Henry Selick’s James and the Giant Peach, in voiceover; Rob Cohen’s DragonHeart; Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet; Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; Terrence Malick’s The New World; Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; The Inner Life of Martin Frost, starring as the title character for writer/director Paul Auster; Bernard Rose’s Mr. Nice, for which he earned a PPG Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film; William Monahan’s London Boulevard, for which he was nominated for the Evening Standard British Film Awards’ Peter Sellers Award for Comedy; Luc Besson’s The Lady; Dean Parisot’s RED 2; Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate; Steven Spielberg’s War Horse; Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem; and Joel and Ethan Coen’s beloved The Big Lebowski.

Mr. Thewlis’ U.K. television credits include Dennis Potter’s classic miniseries The Singing Detective, directed by Jon Amiel; Beeban Kidron’s acclaimed telefilm Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; David Drury’s Prime Suspect 3, with Helen Mirren; Conor McPherson’s telefilm Endgame, adapted from the Samuel Beckett play; and an episode of the anthology series The Street, directed by Terry McDonough, in which he played a dual role and for which he received Monte Carlo TV Festival and Royal Television Society Award nominations.

His stage credits include The Sea, at the Royal National Theatre, directed by Sam Mendes; and Ice Cream, at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Max Stafford Clark.

Mr. Thewlis wrote and directed the feature Cheeky, in which he starred; and Hello, Hello, Hello, which was a BAFTA Award nominee for Best Short Film.

In 2008, he was honored with the British Independent Film Awards’ Richard Harris Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Film.