BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Felicity goes head to head with Hawking as professor's first wife in The Theory of Everything

Felicity Jones toyed with a plate of potatoes and peas as she nonchalantly discussed black holes in space and the theory of relativity.

The actress was on a movie set with Eddie Redmayne, who is portraying Professor Stephen Hawking while she plays his first wife, Jane.

Felicity told me she had to pretend to understand as much as she could about Hawking’s theories, because as Jane, she often had to talk about them.

In the film, The Theory Of Everything, Jones is just as much of a force on screen as Redmayne.

He has the showier role, and gives one of the performances of the year; certainly his career best so far.

Tom Hooper, who directed Redmayne in Les Miserables, agreed that on paper, the role of Mrs Hawking ‘doesn’t amount to much. But Felicity has turned it into a part that dominates the film as much as Eddie does.’

Felicity was determined Jane would have her say. ‘It’s her story, really. It’s based on her book, about how she met Stephen, fell in love with him, and became wife, nurse, mother . . . and slave.

‘She played an important role, and continues to play a major role, in Stephen’s life. I wanted to do justice to her because I think some things were misunderstood about their relationship,’ Jones told me, referring to the couple’s split, after they’d had three children.

Jones said she’d read all she could about Jane, including her university research and books.

‘I think some people thought that she just looked after Stephen and the children. But she has a powerful brain of her own, and she used it.

‘The idea that Jane was the little woman at home is wide of the mark,’ the actress said when I visited her dressing room in between shooting scenes with Redmayne and Charlie Cox, who plays Jane’s second husband.

The Theory Of Everything is essentially a brilliant love story. It’s not heavy on the physics. Rather, it focuses on the physics of love.

Working Title, led by Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, will release it here on January 1, although it’s opening sooner in the U.S.

It was two Americans — Anthony McCarten and Lisa Bruce — who regularly met Jane over several years so she would entrust the film rights to them.

I think she would recognise her spirit in Jones’s sublime portrait.

It’s a long time before the Bafta and Oscar ceremonies, but it would be fitting if both Redmayne and Jones received nominations.

Felicity Jones as Jane Hawkings in The Theory of Everything with Eddie Redmayne who plays the professor

Eddie Redmayne as Professor Stephen Hawkings in the movie which shows the romantic side of the scientist

Working Title, led by Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, will release it on January 1, although it’ll open sooner in the U.S

My horse, my horse - my goodness, Benedict's hoarse!

Benedict Cumberbatch was feeling ‘exhausted’ last Saturday night, and his voice was hoarse . . . because he’d been shouting out for one. A horse, that is.

The actor told me how he had gone from the gala opening of the BFI London Film Festival, which showcased his film The Imitation Game — in which he stars as World War II codebreaker Alan Turing — to the set of The Hollow Crown’s Richard III. He had turned up at 5.30am, having had precious little sleep.

Battle: Benedict Cumberbatch on the set as Richard III in The Hollow Crown

‘I was doing the Battle of Bosworth — you know, “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse!” — on Thursday and Friday, and I was exhausted after it,’ the star, now raspy-voiced, recalled, following another screening of The Imitation Game hosted by Harper’s Bazaar and Studio Canal at the Mayfair Hotel.

The Imitation Game, which also stars Keira Knightley, opens in the UK on November

• The David Byrne and Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love has opened to rave reviews at the National’s Dorfman Theatre. It’s running till January at the NT, and there’s talk of New York’s Public Theatre (where the show began its run) and Broadway producer Joey Parnes transferring it next spring to another theatre — or converting a nightclub. The problem is that things are more expensive in the West End. To pay for it, they’d need to squeeze in an extra 300 or more ticket holders. I just hope it doesn’t get spoilt. It’s a fabulous show just as it is.

 

Matilda the Musical made $2.5million in Australia on the first day of tickets sales for performances in Sydney

The musical Matilda waltzed away with 2.5 million Australian bucks on the first day of ticket sales for performances that start in Sydney next year.

One of the show’s creators is Aussie Tim Minchin but his popularity hardly explains why more than 11,000 tickets were sold in less than 24 hours.

I reckon it’s down to the title. Poor little Aussies spend so much time in the sun that they probably thought it was about their Matilda and not the little girl created by Roald Dahl, with some help, later, from Minchin, writer Dennis Kelly, director Matthew Warchus and choreographer Peter Darling.

I’m sort of joking about the ‘poor little Aussies’. I’m married to a woman from Perth and she’ll leave me out in the sun if she reads this.

Warchus, as revealed here, will make a film version of Matilda in 2016, which will follow on from the great success he has enjoyed with the film Pride, a towering example of friendship and solidarity. 

Florence Pugh, who makes a stunning debut as Abbie, a lascivious teenage schoolgirl, in Carol Morley’s film The Following, which is set in a British girls’ school. The piece has echoes of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, with lasses fainting in the most balletic fashion.

The film, backed and developed by the British Film Institute and BBC Films, was shown at the BFI London Film Festival last Saturday. It also stars Maisie Williams (Arya Stark in Game Of Thrones), Greta Scacchi, Monica Dolan, Maxine Peake and Joe Cole, who’s so good in Peaky Blinders.

Laura Pitt-Pulford plays Maria in The Sound of Music

Green-eyed Ms Pugh is on the shortlist for the London Film Festival Awards, which are being presented tomorrow night at The Banqueting House in Whitehall. Others in that category include: Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Daniel Wolfe and Matthew Wolfe from the film Catch Me Daddy; Guy Myhill, writer and director of The Goob; Alex Lawther, who portrays young Alan Turing brilliantly in The Imitation Game; and the very fine young actor Taron Egerton, who’s in Testament Of Youth.

Laura Pitt-Pulford (right) and Michael French, who will play Maria and Captain Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, Paul Kerryson’s final production as artistic director of the Leicester Curve, where he has overseen shows since 1991. Singing ‘So long, farewell...’ will be Lucy Schaufer, Emma Clifford and Jack Wilcox. Choreographer Drew McOnie will help the cast climb that mountain.

Zach Braff and Kate Hudson, who star in Woody Allen wannabe comedy Wish I Was Here, showing at the forthcoming UK Jewish Film Festival. Braff’s film screens on November 18 and 20.

I was more taken, though, by Eran Riklis’s Dancing Arabs (he made The Lemon Tree a couple of years back), about a gifted Israeli Arab boy who wins a place at a top school in Jerusalem. It’s a superb exploration of identity and family. It screens on November 23 at the Odeon Swiss Cottage, London.

Visit ukjewishfilm.org for venues, dates and details of other pictures.

Amanda Hale, Stanley Townsend, Zoe Brough and Isabella Pappas, who will star in the transfer of Jennifer Haley’s scorching play The Nether, which was a hit at the Royal Court over the summer.

Haley’s thriller examines the illicit online world of child pornography.

Producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Delman will bring the Headlong Theatre production to the Duke of York’s Theatre, where it will preview from January 30 for a three-month run. One hundred tickets will be sold every day for £20.50 during the preview period.

Elliot James Langridge in Northern Soul - a film about two lads from a Lancashire town who skip school to make money and put on gigs where they play rare soul records

The movie, directed by Elaine Constantine, is based in 1974 and shows how black American soul music can change the boys' worlds forver

Rejecting their small town existence working the production line, they dream of going to America in search of the super-rare records that will help them to become the best DJs on the Northern Soul scene

Elliot James Langridge (above) and Josh Whitehouse who, in Elaine Constantine’s film Northern Soul, play two lads from a Lancashire town, circa 1974, who are into records that, in the words of one soul number ‘turn my heartbeat up’. The boys skip school to make sweets, to earn money to put on gigs where they play rare soul records. Antonia Thomas, Steve Coogan and Lisa Stansfield are also in the film, in which Ruth Brophy’s hair designs are spot on.

Gemma Arterton who is luminous in the musical Made In Dagenham, which is previewing at the Adelphi Theatre. The show is based on the real-life story of women workers, who made car seat covers at Ford Dagenham, but went on strike for pay parity with male colleagues. Director Rupert Goold and his team are working to trim and finesse the show into car-showroom shape by opening night on November 5.