For Felicity Jones, Her Clothes Play the Role, Too

Most actresses cede wardrobe and appearance matters to costume designers and stylists. But Ms. Jones, who grew up religiously reading fashion magazines like The Face, let no detail of her character’s appearance escape her personal attention.

Cast just days before the 22-day shoot started, she arrived with a newspaper photograph of a young woman in a green cargo jacket that she had ripped out for inspiration, and a suitcase of possibilities she had culled from her own wardrobe as well as from budget fashion stores like Primark, Zara and Warehouse.

“I always have a very strong sense of how I see the character as soon as I read the script,” said Ms. Jones, who arrives with ideas (if not clothes) at all of her costume fittings. As soon as the clothes “feel right,” she said, “then you can present the character as truthfully as possible.”

The film’s scant $250,000 budget set aside only $600 for her clothing. So Ms. Jones’s self-gathered props included a pair of black red-soled heels that she decided could pass for Christian Louboutins. (Creating her own back story for Anna, she concluded that they would have been a present from a boyfriend.)

The knockoffs appear in the briefest flash, not mentioned in either film notes or dialogue. Most viewers also are unlikely to notice another of Ms. Jones’s touches: allowing the black cord knot that holds up her brass locket to show (because, she said, Anna would never bother readjusting).

Such fleeting details were important, she said. “I think for women characters, it’s so important that what they’re feeling is reflected in the aesthetic choices they’re making,” said Ms. Jones, who studied English at Oxford University and drops references to Roland Barthes as easily as to Topshop.

“Fashion choices are never arbitrary,” she said. “Even if you say you don’t care, that’s a decision. There’s something you’re trying to say.”

Asked about the message of the outfit she wore for a lunch interview at the Bowery Hotel — full-skirted, backless black dress from the emerging label Porter Grey; white, collared Topshop blouse underneath; black, buckled flats from the London vintage shop Rokit — she laughed and suggested: “I like my fashion, but please take me seriously?”

Fashion designers are doing just that. Christopher Bailey of Burberry said he was “mesmerized” when he saw Ms. Jones in a London play two years ago, and so tapped her to appear in a tangerine wool coat in the brand’s autumn-winter 2011 ads.

“Obviously she’s very beautiful but she’s incredibly smart and thoughtful and she knows how to put clothes together and make it look effortless,” he said.

In September, Ms. Jones was Dolce & Gabbana’s guest of honor, alongside Scarlett Johansson, at the spring-summer 2012 show, beating out more usual suspects for the right to introduce the collection on the red carpet. (She said she has worn the short black-and-white tweed double-breasted coat the designers gave her as a present “every day.”)

This week, at the end of a six-week publicity tour for “Like Crazy” in the United States, she met the Proenza Schouler designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCullough for breakfast, and they invited her to their next show.

She is bemused by the attention: an hour discussing her “scruffy” style with a newspaper? Really?

“Maybe a half-hour,” she said jokingly.