The Veronica Betty

At a recent meeting,she was dressed down in a T-shirt,hoodie and shredded jeans. But you could be forgiven for confusing Jones with her starchy alter ego,the immaculate Hitchcock blonde married to the philandering Don Draper.

Certainly,viewers seem perplexed. They conflate the actress with her role,argues Natasha Vargas-Cooper,the author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s Americamaybe because of the intimacy of TV. She is in our living rooms, Vargas-Cooper said,and that just brings up a lot of unsettling feelings.

Indeed,viewers tend to ascribe to Jones the chilly detachment,questionable judgment and unsteady nerves that haunt and define Betty. And Jones seems in no hurry to set them straight.

At 35,she is not much inclined to draw back curtains on her private life. In recent months she made waves not for her roles she plays a scantily clad telepath in X-Men First Class but for a string of romances,including with actor Liam Hemsworth,who was engaged to Miley Cyrus,and Matthew Vaughn her X-Men director,who is married to the model Claudia Schiffer. The celebrity press has branded her a coldblooded temptress,a homewrecker.

In person Jones did little to counter these impressions.

Actually,shes a little bit shy,said Matthew Weiner,the creator of Mad Men. Yet this reticence,if thats what it is,has succeeded in turning Jones,and her character,into arguably the most polarising figure of the series. Some see her as a victim deserving of empathy; others as a dolled-up variation on an American archetype,the uptight suburban matron.

Jones regards Betty with compassion. She is really searching for something,but doesnt know herself well enough to know what might make her happy, she said. If Betty seems unmoored,thats because she is a little girl,an orphan,Jones said. She has a childlike emotional response to things.

Audiences have on the whole been less kind,dubbing her fat Betty,selfish Betty or weird Betty for her morose attitude and flinty behaviour with her children,especially daughter Sally.

Unlike Betty,Jones has demonstrated a fierce independence,as single mother to Xander,her 20-month-old son,whose father she has steadfastly refused to name. Was it the actor Michael Fassbender? Or is it Vaughn? Thats my sons business, she said.

Critics disparaged her as stilted and affectless on Saturday Night Live last fall. But Weiner cast her,he said,because she was the best actress I saw for that part. If people think shes Betty,its because she is that good.

Deliberately provocative,she has confided in interviews that after giving birth to her son,she ate his placenta. It was like taking a vitamin blended into a smoothie, she said unabashedly,explaining that the practice is a common folk remedy against postpartum blues.

Betty,as the series winds to a close next year,may never learn to embrace the unfettered joys of motherhood. Certainly,Jones suggested,lifes fundamental pleasures will continue to elude her.

As perhaps they should. God forbid Betty becomes very happy, she said. Because then Ill be bored stiff.

RUTH LA FERLA