BOSTON COMMON Features Julia Jones' Style!

Twilight's Julia Jones: A Wolf in Chic Clothing

story by janice o’leary
photography by Tim Geaney

Brodick jacket, Dior ($3,200). Copley Place, 617-927-7577. Dress shirt, Ralph Lauren ($198). 93–35 Newbury St., 617-424-1124. Top hat, Goorin Bros. ($130). 130 Newbury St., 617-247-4287. Wool scarf, Norma Ishak ($185). LuxCouture, 9 Lincoln St., 617-969-5600. Necklace (worn as bracelet), Ben-Amun ($220). Good, 88 Charles St., 617-722-9200. Fingerless gloves, LaCrasia Gloves (price on request).     The Jamaica Plain native has had plenty of time to soak up masculine style while shooting Eclipse and the hotly anticipated The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, the first part of which releases November 18. She plays Leah Clearwater, the lone female in the Quileute’s wolf pack. “I have spent so much time with boys during the filming!” she says. “During Eclipse, I hardly ever saw the vampire cast, where there are more women. Breaking Dawn was a slightly different experience for me, though. Jacob, Leah and her brother spend a lot more time with the vampires, so I’ve gotten to know that part of the cast much better.” The collaboration inherent in acting is one of the things Jones loves about the profession. Like her days on her high school ski team, she says, it’s about the individual’s performance enhancing the whole team. “It pushes your game to be around great acting,” she says. “I always want to be in the level above me.” That’s no surprise, coming from a graduate of the competitive Boston Latin School, where “your academic rank drove everything,” Jones says. And she still remembers her own: 33 out of 450. In a school with an incredibly diverse student body, Jones felt at home. “It was an open-minded community,” she says, as was JP: “One of the great things about growing up there was that it’s so ethnically diverse, you didn’t really pay attention to race. My dad is part Choctaw, Chickosaw and African American. I didn’t realize the significance of not being white until I moved to LA.” From Boston Latin, Jones went to Columbia University. With one semester to go, however, “I took the biggest left turn of my life,” she says, moving to LA to start her acting career. Though she did eventually graduate, her career has been on a hot streak since she filmed The Twilight Saga movies. This year, Jones also wrapped Winter in the Blood, and this fall she’ll start work on the indie film Missed Connections. Although she has always been a reader, Jones says it’s not always smart for her to read the book a movie is based on before reading the script. “You end up adding too much from the book into the character,” she says. But with The Twilight Saga that wasn’t the case. “The books are so important to the whole Twilight imagination,” she says. “I couldn’t stop reading them. They totally sweep you away.” If being a reader helped Jones absorb her role as Leah, being trained as a dancer at the Boston Ballet School from age 4 until her sophomore year of high school helped her adopt the physical nature of a wolf. “When I approach a role, physicality is a huge thing for me,” she says. “How would this character move, sit, stand? ” On set with the boys in the wolf pack, Jones has seen the value of her training. “In Twilight, half of the wolf pack has martial arts training,” she says. “There’s a focus and discipline there that helps with acting.” Her ballet training also helped her hold poses when modeling for the Gap and L’Oréal—and shooting on the balcony of the Deluxe Ebersol Suite at The Liberty or on the cobble byways of Beacon Hill (in four-inch heels) for Boston Common, of course. Read more at the Source  (more pics after the break)  At the Source all the clothing and make up details are attached to the photo's