Celyn Jones
Light in the Darkness
Writer, actor, director & producer. Meet Celyn Jones the man taking
Rebel Wilson seriously and making his way to the top table of British cinema.
Interview Philip Goodfellow / Photography Perry Curties
Celyn Jones learned early on in life that it pays to take control of your own destiny. Growing up in Anglesey, North Wales, his mother worked as a baker whilst his father worked on the ferries as a merchant seaman. It was a job his father loved but was forced to give up due to ill health, impacting his family and threatening to derail Celyn’s hopes of a career as an actor before it had even begun. Having discovered acting at school, Celyn found it helped him communicate better whilst strengthening his confidence and sense of self, so he was understandably keen to pursue it is as a vocation. Thankfully, a grant made it possible for him to spend several summers during his late teens with the Manchester Youth Theatre, living in halls of residence and putting on plays. It was an experience that had a lasting impression on Celyn and whilst there he met various collaborators, lifelong friends and even his future wife. A scholarship to the Oxford School of Drama kept his dream on track, the head of the school having found a funding route that made it possible for him to attend. By this time, it was fully instilled in Celyn that opportunities don’t come easily and that, when they do, they should be grasped with both hands. ‘I went to drama school with a drive and a realisation, like it was my only shot, which I think helped. If you could go back in time, you’d maybe tell the younger you to relax a bit more, but I felt like I couldn’t. I had to work full-time but not tell the school, working in pubs and bars, and I couldn’t socialise as much as everyone else, that just wasn’t available to me. I had to squeeze every second out of it. The objective was to go to a good drama school, which would then give me access to the industry and launch me in a certain way.’
The plan worked and Celyn became a professional actor at the start of the new millennium, initially in theatre before moving into television. A love of language and literature meant that Celyn had always assumed his career would be in classical theatre, but an encounter with esteemed British casting director Mary Selway altered his outlook. ‘I met her early on and she told my then agent “He’s a film actor”. Then she brought me in for a few auditions and told me the same thing to my face. I never translated it as her saying “This kid’s going to be a movie star”, but I did think of it as she thought the qualities I had were more suited for film. I’d always loved film because where I grew up there were no theatres, so you went to the cinema or you went to the video shop. My love of acting came from films, then when I started taking it seriously, obviously your route in is through theatre and plays, then you go to drama school. So she kind of planted that seed and she was right. At this point, years later, my career is in film – being in them, writing them, producing them, directing them.’
As organic as it has been, Celyn’s progression from acting into writing, directing and producing all feeds back to his instinct for making the most of opportunities when they arise and, if they don’t, creating your own. Whilst working on British crime drama series Above Suspicion, director Gillies MacKinnon shared an idea that would prove to be another turning point for Celyn. ‘He essentially said “You should play Harry Secombe, we should find a Spike Milligan and a Peter Sellers and we should do the story of The Goons”. I looked into it and thought what an amazing story that was, how they got together. I really liked the idea and saw it as an opportunity, so I went for coffee with him and said ‘Are you serious?’. He said ‘Yeah. I can’t write it though; why don’t you try and write it?’ That was the first script I ever got commissioned and it came from me trying to create more opportunities as an actor, always wanting to prove that there’s more to me. We never made it - we might still, though I might be a bit too old to play Harry now; maybe I’ll direct it - but that script was the thing that kicked me off into feeling like I could actually write a screenplay.’
Momentum continued to build and, true to form, Celyn didn’t let it go to waste. Next up was a role he had felt drawn towards playing for some time, that of Welsh cultural icon Dylan Thomas. Along with collaborator Andy Goddard, Celyn sat down to write what would become the film Set Fire to the Stars, with Goddard at the helm and Elijah Wood playing American poet John Malcolm Brinnin opposite Ceryn’s Dylan Thomas. ‘I was attracted to playing this guy who’d said he had “a beast, an angel and a madman” within him, I wanted to portray him in all his glory and shadows and insecurities. As an actor, I always feel you need to find the monster in the man and the man in the monster. If there’s a theme to all my parts and all my stories, it’s that I’m trying to find the light in the darkness and the darkness in the light. That repeats throughout my career, whether as an actor or a filmmaker. I also had this sense that if I didn’t do it myself, no-one was going to give me the opportunity. That film was important for me because it was a case of really putting myself on the chopping board and saying “Can I do it? Can I contend? Can I play a part with real depth and range?”. I was so proud of it. At the time, I thought “Oh, the film did well” but, with hindsight, the film did extraordinarily well; it was a minor miracle. Made for half a million quid – we raised every penny ourselves – it opened in America, won all these awards, it was huge.’ The film would also spawn Mad As Birds, an independent production company that has come to serve as a home for Celyn’s expanding creative endeavours, it’s name taken from the Dylan Thomas poem Love in the Asylum. ‘When we made Set Fire to the Stars, we needed to name the production company, then we just decided to keep it going and see how far it could take us. I’m really proud of it because I set it up to not just be about vehicles for me and, though I’m across every film we do, it’s grown as a company in it’s own right.’ The company has since gone on to produce several notable feature films, including psychological thriller The Vanishing starring Gerard Butler, which Celyn co-wrote; comedy Poms, which features a stellar female cast led by Diane Keaton; and Six Minutes To Midnight, starring Eddie Izzard who also co-wrote the script with Celyn and Andy Goddard.
The latest Mad As Birds project, The Almond and the Seahorse, sees Celyn wearing all of his filmmaking hats at once – producing, co-directing, co-writing and starring in. Based on the play of the same name by Kaite O’Reilly, who co-wrote the screenplay, the film tells the story of two relationships struggling to survive the trauma of serious brain injury. It can often be the case when a story that started out life as a play is transferred to film that the end result just looks and feels like a play on screen, but The Almond and the Seahorse succeeds in avoiding that pitfall, something that was wholly by design. ‘You don’t want it to feel like it never got away from the play, just like you don’t want a film to feel like it never got away from a novel. We couldn’t just put the play on film; the play is a five-hander and has a very certain structure. The film had to be stretched out, broadened, with more characters, thought out in different ways, expanded, resolved as well, generally fleshed out. Kaite was great to work with, she wasn’t precious about that; she wanted the film to be the film and the play to be the play.’ Reprising the stage role O’Reilly had originally written specifically for him, Celyn plays Joe, one of the two characters who have suffered a brain injury, and he appears opposite a triumvirate of female acting talent in Charlotte Gainsbourg, Trine Dyrholm and, in her first dramatic lead role, Rebel Wilson. If casting Rebel Wilson – who plays Joe’s partner Sarah – was a leap of faith, it is one that Celyn was excited about. ‘It was a leap of faith on both sides really. Something new for her, something new for me. I get excited about people doing new things, because I like to do new things myself; to see Elijah Wood like you’ve never seen Elijah Wood before, Eddie Izzard like you’ve never seen Eddie Izzard before, Gerard Butler like you’ve never seen Gerard Butler before, now Rebel Wilson like you’ve never seen Rebel Wilson before. I was excited about it and she was excited because she really wanted that opportunity. She wants the world to see this film, not just for her but also for everyone else involved, for her performance, for Charlotte and Trine’s performances. She is so celebratory about it, which is great.’
Unsurprisingly, Celyn has various projects in the pipeline, behind the camera as writer, director and producer on a film adaptation of Fiona McFarlane’s book The Night Guest, whilst bringing together an as yet untitled TV series he has written set in France and Wales, as well as appearing in front of the camera in two new films, competitive vegetable growing mockumentary Swede Caroline, which won the Spirit of Raindance award at this year’s Raindance film festival, and Chuck Chuck Baby, which Celyn describes as ‘a sexual awakening musical set in a chicken factory in North Wales’. All the while looking after his expanding family, doing school runs, coaching rugby on Sunday mornings and walking the dog. ‘All I know is to do. I can’t help myself. I couldn’t stop myself from doing because I can’t trust that things will last forever and I need to be in control. I’m ambitious and just as ambitious for everyone else around me. I meet new people and I think of a new idea, I meet new collaborators, I think “What story can we tell together?”. Look at what we’ve done so far. Let’s see where else we can go.’
Hair & Makeup - Margot Schifano
Celyn wears various pieces by Private White V.C.