SHE is the former child actress who is well on her way to conquering Hollywood – but has Darth Vader firmly in her sights right now.
Oscar-nominated Felicity Jones leads the way in £160million blockbuster Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, heading a cast dominated by homegrown actors and directed by Brit Gareth Edwards.
Here, ahead of the movie’s release on Thursday, GRANT ROLLINGS introduces the main players.
Felicity Jones
FELICITY spent months learning martial arts for her role as rebel Jyn Erso, who is a tougher version of Princess Leia.
And it is a big change from a few years ago when Felicity was best known as Emma Grundy in the Radio 4 soap The Archers.
She was still with her university sweetheart and was the last person you would expect to see in an action movie.
Screen roles included The Invisible Woman, The Theory of Everything and costume dramas such as Brideshead Revisited.
The Birmingham-born actress, 33, said: “It was great to finally get out of the corset and I am never going back.”
She was nominated for an Oscar last year for her performance as Stephen Hawking’s wife opposite Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything.
But her route to the top has not been easy.
She was raised by a single parent, struggled with early success as a child actress and faced a painful ending to her longest relationship.
Felicity got the acting bug at primary school and joined Central Television’s now defunct Birmingham workshop, which offered free drama training to children.
She has described one of the tutors, Colin Edwards, as her “mentor”, after he was quick to spot her talent.
Colin said: “When a new part came up, all the young people in the group would ask me, ‘Is Felicity going up for this one?’. If I said she was they’d say, ‘Oh well we might as well not bother then, she’s bound to get it’.”
Felicity’s first TV role was alongside Keira Knightley in The Treasure Seekers 20 years ago.
But she got homesick while recording her first main role as the bully in a series called The Worst Witch.
She once said: “I was only 12 and didn’t want to leave home.
“My mother had to ring them and say, ‘I don’t think she is coming back, sorry’.” Felicity overcame her homesickness to work on The Archers as tearaway Emma from the age of 15 until she was 25.
She also accepted a part in a television ad for the zit-busting Clean and Clear facewash at the age of 17.
Unsure of whether acting would provide a living, Felicity studied English at Oxford.
While there, she attended the drum & bass club nights put on by Rogue One co-star Riz Ahmed, then a fellow student.
At Oxford, she met artist Ed Fornieles and dated him for a decade until their split in 2013.
After the break-up, he painted a creepy family portrait showing himself and Jones alongside the three imaginary children they would never have.
She has been with movie director Charles Guard for more than a year and a half.
It was during her period of personal upheaval that Felicity’s career flourished.
There were even rumours she was in line to play Anastasia Steele in the 2015 film Fifty Shades of Grey, but was passed over because she was too old.
In between playing a sci-fi rebel, Felicity has also filmed Inferno with Tom Hanks, which was released in October, and A Monster Calls, which opens on New Year’s Day.
As for her Star Wars future, it is expected to be a one-off in that galaxy far, far away . . . because Rogue One will not have a sequel.
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Riz Ahmed
AS a boyhood fan of the Star Wars series, Riz did everything possible to get the part of rebel pilot Bodhi Rook in the latest film.
He even sent Rogue One director Gareth Edwards a dozen recordings of auditions.
Riz, 34, from Wembley, North West London, said: “Gareth said he wanted me to put myself on tape and sent me his personal email address.
“Big mistake. That day I sent him two versions of the scene and over the next 12 days I sent him 12.
“I thought I had blown it on a psychopath level.”
As a child Riz enjoyed acting out pretend films and he described himself as “a kind of hyperactive, naughty loudmouth”.
He won a scholarship to a private school at 11 and went on to Oxford, where a friend who saw him on stage suggested he should give acting a go.
His first role was in 2006 movie The Road to Guantanamo about three Muslims from Tipton in the West Midlands who are captured in Afghanistan.
He also appeared in critically acclaimed terrorist satire Four Lions and TV drama The Night Of.
Riz is part of an ethnically diverse band of rebels in the first Star Wars spin-off film, which includes Forest Whitaker, Donnie Yen and Diego Luna.
Right-wing racists in the US have started a #DumpStarWars campaign because Rogue One shows that the universe is not all white.
It is the kind of hatred British Muslim Riz has experienced all too often. The star has told how he and his brother Kamran had knives held to their throats when they were younger.
Riz, whose parents moved to London from Pakistan in the Seventies, said: “As children in the Eighties, when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black.
“A decade later, the knife to my throat was held by another ‘P***’, a label we wore with swagger in the Brit-Asian youth and gang culture of the Nineties.”
He has starred in movies such as this year’s Jason Bourne and Plan B’s gritty Ill Manors in 2012.
He has also turned to rapping. Performing as Riz MC, he released an album in 2011 and has formed a group called The Swet Shop Boys.
Spencer Wilding
HE is no household name – but has landed the role of cinema’s most iconic bad guy.
Spencer, 44, from Rhyl, has been in films and TV shows including Game of Thrones, Batman Begins and Victor Frankenstein and takes over from original Vader David Prowse.
The 6ft 7in boxing champ, who was Hagrid’s double in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, has been sworn to secrecy over his Rogue One role – he has still not been officially unveiled.
When The Sun spoke to him at his semi-detached home in North Wales about being Vader, he simply said: “I cannot confirm or deny it.”