6 fast facts about Coda star Emilia Jones: the breakout Brit plays guitar, had already acted alongside Anne Hathaway and in Pirates of the Caribbean by age nine – and loves Viola Davis

Apr 4 , 2022

British actress Emilia Jones attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party following the 94th Oscars at the The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California on March 27, 2022. (Photo by Patrick T. FALLON / AFP)

The Coda star studied sign language, took singing lessons and even learned to fish in order to fully immerse herself in the role alongside her deaf co-stars

Daughter of Welsh singer Aled Jones, Emilia shares her father’s passion for music, loves Marvin Gaye and even played a Fleetwood Mac song on guitar at her Coda audition

Emilia Jones just became an overnight star after Coda was crowned Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars, making history as the first-ever streaming-only film to win Hollywood’s biggest prize. It was released by Apple TV+ after a bidding war at last year’s Sundance Film Festival ended in a record-breaking US$25 million deal.

The success of the movie – named after the acronym for child of deaf adults – is thanks in no small part to the touching performance of Jones as Ruby Rossi, the only hearing member of a deaf family who dreams of being a singer. So what do we know about the 20-year-old British actress?

She’s been a gifted actor since childhood

Born in 2002 to Welsh singer, radio and television host Aled Jones, Emilia inherited her dad’s ease in front of the camera. She never had formal training, but role played at home as a child, as recounted to The Independent. After attending an improv game class it wasn’t long before the agent running it suggested she audition for One Day at the age of eight – scoring her the role as Jasmine, alongside Anne Hathaway.

She then played small parts in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), an episode of smash television series Doctor Who and Utopia (both in 2013). At the same time, she was also performing in the theatre, including big shows like Shrek the Musical (2011) and The Turn of the Screw (2013).

Next up, she is set to lead season three of Netflix’s fantasy drama Locke and Key and thriller movie Cat Person, both set to air this year.

She pulled out all the stops for her part in Coda

Joining Coda as the lead was a big challenge for Jones, who didn’t know sign language and had never trained as a singer when she was cast.

So in addition to professional singing classes, she also spent nine months studying with a sign language teacher, learning not just the language but also the culture and nuances of the deaf community. “I didn’t just want to learn my lines, because I wanted to be able to communicate with (co-stars) Marlee [Matlin], Troy [Kotsur] and Daniel [Durrant] without an interpreter,” she told IndieWire.

Not an easy feat given that she was working 75 hours per week for Locke & Key. So she practised during break time there. “One of the crew members once asked me what I was finger-spelling and I was like, ‘Tinder!’”, she joked in an interview with Glamour.

But that wasn’t enough for the complex role. Rossi grew up in a fishing family so Jones also learnt to fish. “We’d go out with the fishermen at 3am every morning for two weeks, and then I’d get back smelling like fish guts and I’d be a state and then I’d go into ASL training,” Jones said later.