Jessica Brown Findlay tells Keeley Bolger about discarding Downton’s glamorous gowns to go grubby

IT’S a good job Jessica Brown Findlay can laugh at herself. In her latest role, she plays headstrong heroine Mary Yellan, a young woman who finds herself living with a group of smugglers in 1820s Cornwall.

During a break in filming of the gothic new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, the actress – best-known for her role as the principled Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey – found herself being quizzed as to whether she could afford to pay for her shopping.

With mud-splattered clothes, dirt beneath her fingernails and a rather more grungy appearance to that of Lady Sybil, it’s perhaps no wonder her rugged look took some by surprise.

“I had mud all over my face and a cut lip and the cashier said, ‘Do you pay for your prescriptions?’”

says the 24-year-old actress, laughing.

“When I said I did, they asked, ‘Are you sure?’ Later I looked in the mirror and I understood why...”

An ex-ballerina, who turned to acting when an ankle injury halted her dancing career, Findlay Brown likes the fact that Jamaica Inn isn’t just “fluffy, girly, boring stuff”. And with an award-winning director, Philippa Lowthorpe, and writer Emma Frost at the helm, there was a strong female presence on set too.

“I feel very proud to be a part of it and also to be telling a story that isn’t what some people would call a ‘woman’s story’,” she says of the three-part series. “The series isn’t only to be enjoyed by a woman, that’s not what it is at all. It proves you can tell these stories from a different point of view, but with the same result and the same action and tension; it’s a really exciting thing for me.”

Exciting as it might be for the Berkshire-born actress, she is the first to admit that squelching around in boggy marshes on the Cornish moors and being mistaken for a vagrant isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Neither is being beamed to millions of homes without a scrap of make-up on.

“We had no hair-dos or make-up, everything was incredibly minimal,” explains Brown Findlay. “We wanted to look cold, which often meant a red nose, blotched cheeks and blue lips. That’s fantastic – it looks how it would have done. It would be ridiculous if everything else was right, but we were clearly wearing make-up and mascara.”

For 20 minutes of one episode, the action takes place on the beach and in the sea, meaning Brown Findlay was forced to thrust herself into the icy Cornish waters for filming.

“It could be terrifying, but you are safe, there are lifeguards,” she explains. “To be able to do those scenes in the sea is important. If you’d done it in the studio, it would have been completely different.”

The comforts of Downton must have seemed a million miles away during moments like that, but Brown Findlay is only too happy to try something new and enjoys playing characters who “are not like me”.

Since her death in childbirth in the third series of Downton, the actress has been doing just that, with a main role in recent film A New York Winter’s Tale with Colin Farrell, as well upcoming parts in British thriller Posh, and Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe. Brown Findlay admits she always keeps the lighter side of life in mind, while her family keep any ego in check.

“My parents are like, ‘What you do you take seriously, but yourself, never’,” she says. “Don’t confuse the two. I think if I started getting any high and mighty ideas, my family would bring me down.”

Even if she did get above her station, it sounds as though her trailing period dresses would bring her back to earth with a bang. “I am quite clumsy on set,” she admits, chuckling.

“I will be doing a scene and it’s lovely, and then I’ll trip up on my skirt and I’m on my knees laughing at how ridiculous I must look.

“It’s very important to be able to laugh at yourself especially in this job,” she adds.

  • Jamaica Inn, BBC1, Monday, 9pm