Gillian Jones
Gillian Jones is an actor, born 1947.
Gillian Jones comes from Newcastle in New South Wales and belongs to the generation of Australian actors who built their reputations on stage first. Twelfth Night and Oscar and Lucinda are the credits usually cited; in the second she played Elizabeth Leplastrier, and it remains the most substantial film role on this list.
Television brought the recognition: Di Paige in Love My Way, a recurring part in Packed to the Rafters from 2009, and Rachel in The Slap. What she brings to a scene is history. She reads as a woman with a life already behind her, which is why Australian directors keep casting her in films where the landscape is doing half the acting.
That has produced an unusually good late run. She is one of the Vuvalini in Mad Max: Fury Road, the band of older women the film keeps back for its second half. She is Grandma in The Rover, Sally in Goldstone, Vonnie in The Tree, Dr Goodtime in Judy & Punch, and Tashi Tsomo in War Machine. It is a body of work assembled almost entirely from other people's supporting parts, and it is more distinctive than most leading careers manage.
Movies (7)
TV (1)
Where to start with Gillian Jones
Mad Max: Fury Road is the shortest route in, and there is no shame in starting with the biggest film she has been near, though her part is shared with a whole band of Vuvalini.
Oscar and Lucinda is the real answer: a proper role in a strange, ambitious literary adaptation, and the one that shows what she does with more than a scene.
Then take the modern Australian run in a block. The Rover for the bleakest, Goldstone for the best written, Judy & Punch for the most peculiar, The Tree for the quietest. The Slap is the television option and was engineered to start arguments. War Machine is the curiosity.