Amelia Wren in The Aeronauts (2019)
James Glaisher, one of the heroes of the hot-air balloon drama The Aeronauts, really did exist. But Amelia Wren, the daring heroine of the journey played by Felicity Jones (left), was a fictionalized character.
As The Aeronauts director Tom Harper has explained, Wren was a composite based on two people: One was Henry Tracey Coxwell, who joined Glaisher on the record-breaking 1862 expedition fictionalized in the film. The other was Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to become a professional balloonist, who was also “Napoleon’s head of aeronautics,” according to Harper.
Despite some liberties with the facts — and the invention of a lovable heroine — Harper told a SCAD Savannah Film Festival audience in 2019 that 90 percent of the events depicted in The Aeronauts really did happen.
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