According to Ashley Jones, the best career advice she ever received was to persevere, and consequentially, it’s her perseverance that has maintained her successful acting career. Since her start in commercials at the age of 5, Ashley, now 33, has proactively sought work – and it’s paid off. Her résumé boasts an extensive list and range of roles, from a hometown Louisiana girl on HBO’s True Blood, to sophisticated New Yorker Camille on ABC’s Flash Forward, to naive Bridget on The Bold and the Beautiful, among others.
Jones’ charmingly outgoing personality shone at a young age and it became clear to her family that performing was in her blood. After doing a series of commercials, she asked her mother to do something more challenging.

So at the age of 9, Jones began acting in theatrical productions in her home state of Texas while her parents balanced her expanding career with caring for her younger brother. Her parents remained supportive because they knew acting was Ashley’s love.
Though nerves were always an issue for Jones before any performance, it was the feeling she got on stage that told her this was to be her career. She remembers being a young performer. “I distinctly remember being so nervous right before I went on stage, feeling like I was going to throw up, and then once I got on stage and said a couple of lines, I was in another world. It never occurred to me to do anything else with my life.”
 When Jones was 14, she got her first break in the world of television. Someone took note of her talent in a theater performance and suggested she send a tape to Castle Rock Entertainment in Los Angeles. While she didn’t land the movie role for which the tape was intended, she earned herself a guest spot on the TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, as well as a lead role in a CBS miniseries that required her to travel for three months to film.
That meant leaving high school early. “It’s a very weird transition on so many levels,” Jones says about leaving her Texas home. “You’re going through puberty and you’re leaving your element and traveling with all of these people from California who have lived a totally different life than I was living.”
It also prompted her teenage rebellious phase. Ashley’s mom was taking care of her new baby sister (the sibs are almost 13 years apart) and her family couldn’t accompany her during filming. So with Ashley traveling with guardians who weren’t her parents, and the teen beginning a rebellious phase, Jones’ parents decided it was time for a break.
“My mom said, ‘Enough is enough. You’re not doing this anymore until you can do it on your own,’ and I of course was upset about that because I had the ball rolling ­– I could’ve kept working – but looking back, my parents knew exactly what they were doing – and thank goodness! When you’re a fiery teenage girl who has her own idea of what she wants to do, who knows what path I would’ve taken? Tightening the reins and having me finish high school back in Texas was definitely right,” she says in retrospect.
Once finished with high school, it was back to business for Jones. Aside from that brief break in her career (which wasn’t really a break as she continued to do local theater and commercials), Jones has never stopped working. Among her countless television roles, soap audiences grew to love her as Bridget Forrester in The Bold and the Beautiful. And her role of Daphne on True Blood would bring in a new fan base for the actress.
Jones recently returned from a True Blood conference in Florida and says that the role of Daphne will probably linger with her for a very long time. “The fans made me excited and just hanging out with the other cast members reinvigorated me and I’m so wanting to do something with the show or another show like it. I don’t know if that role will ever really leave me because it was so much fun to play and so different from anything I’d ever done. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of all-nighters,” she says.
The newest role to look out for is Camille in Flash Forward, the newest Lost-like series to hit the network (and with Lost in its last season, it’s comforting to know that we have a new series to become addicted to). And yes, she will be filming The Bold and the Beautiful simultaneously, juggling a very busy schedule with very little downtime. Jones can’t reveal much about what’s to happen in Flash Forward, mostly because she doesn’t know herself. The scripts are usually given to actors the day before, and if revisions are made, actors have to turn the old scripts in. “I’m excited to see where they’re going with it; from what I’ve heard about my future episodes, it’s really, really, really cool,” she says.
One part of her résumé Jones is still looking to build is the comedy aspect. “I’ve been going into a lot of meetings for sitcoms and it’s such a Catch-22 because they want to hire someone who’s already been on a sitcom because it’s such a specific medium, so hopefully I’ll end up on one, but that’s always a dream role, to do a great comedy.” She also says she’d do anything for a role on the FX show Damages.
When not auditioning, filming two shows at once, or making a New Year’s resolution to be more organized, Jones is flexing her entrepreneurial muscles. She and her close friend Karen Barber, a producer in the entertainment business, were brainstorming one day as to what the best essential beauty item for every woman would be. Their solution? BeautySilkz, a silk charmeuse pillowcase containing natural proteins and 18 essential amino acids that nourish skin and hair while you sleep. It’s available at beautysilkz.com and is doing “phenomenally well.”
Jones also lends her time to charities, one of which is Step Up Women’s Network, which networks professional women with each other and with inner city girls who have dreams of professional careers. “We show them they can do anything they want. We mentor them, help them get scholarships – it really connects women and helps you form real relationships,” Jones says.
Jones will always be a Texas girl. She most recently had three weeks off from filming and spent it at home with her friends and family; she still refers to Texas as home. Jones says she’s always known that someday she will return there and she can’t believe she’s been in LA for 17 years. “There’s a sense of me that feels like I never left Texas, I can always go back to that,” she says. But don’t expect her to ever stop acting. “I think I’d be able to take time off, but I’d never be able to just let it go.”