[Photo Credit: AP Photo]

Daisy Edgar-Jones just wanted to know who her Marianne was going to be.

After a lifetime of dreaming in Jane Austen — reading every novel and watching every adaptation she could get her hands on — she’d been cast as Elinor, the elder, more sensible Dashwood sister, in “Sense and Sensibility” (in theaters Friday).

If it wasn’t an inevitability that she, as one of the bright young talents of her generation, would eventually get to be in an Austen adaptation, it might seem that way in retrospect. For English actors of a certain age, starring in one is almost a rite of passage. Ang Lee’s 1995 version would earn Kate Winslet her first Oscar nomination and Emma Thompson her first screenwriting win. And this one was going to be special, having the distinction of being the first major “Sense and Sensibility” to be directed by a woman, Georgia Oakley.

And though it was also an inevitability that there would be a slew of handsome men in the mix, including George MacKay, Frank Dillane and Herbert Nordrum (it is the law in Austen adaptation-land, isn’t it?), the relationship between the sisters was, Edgar-Jones said, “kind of everything.” And the search for the more outwardly romantic Dashwood was ongoing.

One of the names in the mix was Esmé Creed-Miles, who might not have come into the audition process with a deep Austen reverence, but who had something even better going for her. She and Edgar-Jones didn’t just know one another: They had spent a formative summer in Yorkshire together as teenagers making an indie film called “Pond Life” and watching “Love Island” together at night.

At their chemistry read, everyone in the room could feel an immediate intimacy as they dove into some challenging scenes, like one where the ever-reserved Elinor finally reveals to Marianne that she too is heartbroken over a man. The exercise even helped Edgar-Jones understand her Elinor a little better.

It wasn’t just the dramatic moments that were revealing, either. That day of the chemistry reads, Creed-Miles had a bit of a break while Edgar-Jones read with someone else and, Oakley said, “helped herself to Daisy’s lunch.”

Creed-Miles, whose parents are actors Samantha Morton and Charlie Creed-Miles, has been acting on and off for most of her life, starting with a role at age 6 playing a Shirley Temple impersonator in a Harmony Korine movie. She also starred in the Amazon Prime series “Hanna” but has kind of resisted committing to being a career actor.