Felicity Jones did kung fu every day in preparation for ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’.
The 33-year-old actress – who portrays Jyn Erso – was surprised by how much training she had to put herself through prior to shooting the upcoming epic space opera film.
The brunette beauty – who is just 5ft 4 – said: "I’ve never done this level of physical preparation for something before. Particularly for ‘Rogue One’, where I was training every day and doing kung fu rehearsals on a daily basis. But that’s part of the reason why I wanted to do it, because it was very different from what I’d done before."
However, it wasn’t just the physicality of the film that Jones struggled with, as she also found it hard having to improvise during rehearsals as the director Gareth Edwards preferred to limit the amount of script work and just get stuck in to filming immediately.
Speaking to Total Film magazine, she explained: "Gareth really loves to bring improvisation to the process. Unlike ‘Inferno’, where we had lots of rehearsal, with ‘Rogue One’ it was a different process – Gareth often holds the camera himself and he will watch the scene and change camera positions, depending on what we’re doing as actors. So that was trying to find something in the moment that is unexpected and spontaneous. We would often shoot in a 360-degree set. There would be supporting artists everywhere, moving around. You wouldn’t know where people were going to be. It was very much trying to find a documentary style within the framework of ‘Star Wars’."
‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ is set to hit cinemas on December 16.
Felicity Jones did kung fu every day for Rogue One
