Playing Dickens’s mistress

By Felicity Jones

My journey into Dickensian London began in a hotel lobby in Beverly Hills. It was March 2011. I was in LA promoting "Like Crazy", and Ralph Fiennes was there with "Coriolanus". After I'd blustered in, apologising for being late, we ordered pancakes and discussed the script he'd sent me, an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's book about Dickens's long affair with an actress, Nelly Ternan, which began when he was 45 and she was 18. Ralph was directing the film, probably not playing Dickens himself ("it can be difficult trying to do both"), and considering me for the role of Nelly.

I had met Ralph on the set of "Cemetery Junction"; he played a chauvinist 1970s tycoon and I was his daughter. I watched him closely, fascinated by his precision. There was a musicality in his delivery, a measure of theatricality, yet he was entirely believable. Once, I took hold of his arm to pull him from his chair in the first rehearsal and then didn't do it in the second—and Ralph said he thought the first time worked better. Even then there was a director at work in the actor.