Jennifer Connelly - Biography

Name: Jennifer Connelly

Born: 12 December 1970 (Age: 38)

Where: Woodstock, New York, USA

Height: 5' 8"

Awards: Won 1 Oscar, 1 BAFTA, 1 Golden Globe

It's a hoary old saying in the acting world that "It took me twenty years to be an overnight success". Hoary, but so often true. And, weirdly (being as she's still in her early thirties), it's true of Jennifer Connelly. To most people, her Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, wherein she played the wife of Russell Crowe's schizophrenic mathematician, came completely out of the blue. Maybe they'd spotted her before, as Jackson Pollock's mistress in Pollock. Maybe they'd seen her as a junkie prostitute in Darren Aronofsky tortured Requiem For A Dream. More likely they hadn't. Nearly everybody hadn't.

So most would think Connelly is this year's Chloe Sevigny or Hilary Swank - a couple of cool indie movies and BANG! But this is far, far from the truth. For Jennifer has been working since the age of 10, acting since she was 12. A child star, she's spent the last 15 years struggling to get back to where she started - pretty much at the top.

She was born Jennifer Lynn Connelly on the 12th of December, 1970 (same day as Madchen Amick), in Woodstock, New York, just over a year after the famous music festival at Yasgur's farm. Her mother, Eileen, ran an antiques shop in Woodstock, while her father, Gerard, sold children's clothes in New York City. They were fairly well-to-do and owned another property at Bellport, Long Island. When Jennifer was four, they moved to Brooklyn Heights, just across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, Jennifer completing her primary and secondary education at St Ann's school.

Her education widened quickly. An advertising executive friend of the family suggested that 10-year-old Jennifer, being extraordinarily good-looking, might make a great child-model. So,they went looking for representation, and found it in the prestigious Ford Agency and, after school, Eileen would take little Jennifer into the city to auditions. She was very successful, appearing in many newspaper and magazine ads, and in TV commercials. These days, Jennifer claims she can remember very little about this, in fact recalling only one ad - for Scott's toilet paper.

Jennifer's work took her all over, particularly to Europe and, while in England, she made her onscreen debut as a member of an underground child cult in the video for Duran Duran's Union Of The Snake. She also won a part in one episode of the hit series, Tales Of The Unexpected, spooky adaptations of Roald Dahl stories.

About a year earlier, she'd also been suggested for another, far bigger project. Sergio Leone, director of Clint Eastwood's early spaghetti Westerns, was putting together an epic spanning the career of a gang of Jewish hoodlums in New York City.

Robert De Niro was to star as Noodles, James Woods as Max, there'd be Joe Pesci and James Russo and Elizabeth McGovern as Deborah, the love of Noodles' life. Leone needed a girl to play the young Deborah, someone who could dance charmingly too. Connelly claims it was the easiest audition she ever had. First day she danced. Second day she met Leone. Third day she met Leone and De Niro, and she was in. Apparently, her nose helped. It was just like McGovern's.

. So, Jennifer celebrated her 12th birthday in Rome, on the set of Once Upon A Time In America. She loved it - it was far preferable to having her picture taken as she remained very reserved, even shy. So, when the opportunity arose to act once more in Italy, she said YES, despite the oddness of the role. And it was very odd, even judged by the crazy standards of Italian cinema. She was to play a girl who can communicate with insects, a gift that comes in handy when she enrols at a posh girls' school where the pupils are getting slaughtered one by one. The movie would climax with Jennifer almost drowning in a pit full of maggots and dead bodies. Bit of a change from dancing charmingly, no?

The idea of young girls covered in maggots will ring alarm bells for anyone who's seen Suspiria, one of the strangest, most repulsive and beautiful horror films ever made. And, quite right, Jennifer's next role was to be in Creepers, by Suspiria's director Dario Argento. Argento, you see, was a friend of Sergio Leone. In fact, they'd written together back in the Sixties, the Henry Fonda-starring Once Upon A Time In The West having been penned by the mindblowing trio of Leone, Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci. As if by way of apology, next came the infinitely more tasteful Seven Minutes In Heaven where Jennifer played a Grade-A student who lets a troubled male friend stay at her house, much to her boyfriend's chagrin. The film featured the screen debut of Lauren Holly, later to star in Dumb And Dumber.

After these came something much more mainstream. In Labyrinth, Connelly plays a young girl who, frustrated by having to baby-sit her brother, calls the goblins to take him away - which they duly do. This being a movie directed by "muppeteer" Jim Henson and produced by George Lucas, she has to discover the key to the Goblin King's labyrinth and rescue her li'l bro', and while doing so meets all manner of fantastical beasts. Connelly enjoyed the shoot immensely, particularly the scene where she wore a silver ballgown and danced with Goblin King David Bowie to a track he wrote especially for the film (Bowie said she reminded him of the young Elizabeth Taylor). She actually had a bit of a pop career herself, around this time, singing a song called Monologue Of Love for the Japanese market (she did it phonetically). Later, she'd appear alongside Jason Priestly in the video to Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night, a Top 10 hit just after the Big O passed away.

It was going well but, as with all child stars, now Connelly had to grow up. After a brief break, she reappeared in Some Girls, the directorial debut of Michael Hoffman, who'd go on to make Restoration and One Fine Day. This was a strange, and quite black comedy where student Patrick Dempsey goes to Quebec to spend Christmas with his girlfriend, Gaby D'Arc, played by Connelly. On his arrival, she tells him she doesn't love him any more, but he sticks around to receive lessons in life and love from her sexy sisters, her father, who spends most of his time naked, and her grandma (who thinks he's her dead husband). The movie was very French in its feel, and Connelly kept on the international tip with her next outing, as a ballerina in the Italian film, Etoile.

. After this came another break and a serious reconsidering of her life. "I began working when I hadn't yet come into my own," she later explained "when I was a walking puppet. Some of the movies I did . . . I look back and cringe". Now she wondered whether she really wanted to be an actress, whether she wanted to endure the stress of growing up in public. She decided that she did. Having indulged herself in bouts of underage clubbing, she also began to wear black and listen to The Cure. Life was becoming serious.

With the Nineties came the best and worst of Jennifer's early career. In The Hot Spot, directed by Dennis Hopper (who'd seen her in Some Girls), Don Johnson plays a rough-boy who drives into a small Texan town, gets a job, plans a bank robbery, enjoys the attentions of the boss's wife, Virginia Madsen, and falls for nice girl accountant Connelly. Now a voluptuous woman, Jennifer caught the attention of many male critics, particularly when semi-clad. Discussing her occasional onscreen nudity, she'd later say "Those were formative experiences. I used to be shy and timid. I was a good kid and I wanted to be one, but it can lead to a reserve that can be hampering. It's been a gradual unleashing". Attentions were also grabbed by an apparent feud between Hopper and Johnson. In post-production publicity, Dennis actually referred to the Miami Vice star as "a pimple on the ass of Mankind".

Her other major role at the time was in The Rocketeer. This, where a young pilot discovers a jet-pack and uses it to save his girlfriend and foil gangsters and Nazis in 1930's Hollywood, was intended to match the success of the Indiana Jones movies. But, up against both Terminator 2 and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, it did not fare so well, despite being an absolute delight. Connelly was again eye-catching, this time as the actress-wannabe girlfriend of Bill Campbell. In real life, she and Campbell became an item, and saw each other on and off for five years, at one point even getting engaged.

Neither The Hot Spot nor The Rocketeer struck paydirt. And neither did the film they sandwiched, Career Opportunities.

A romantic comedy written by John Hughes, this saw Connelly as a rich girl trapped overnight in a store with the town loser, played by Frank Whaley. They begin to understand each other, but then the store is broken into and the movie becomes a version of Home Alone, also written by Hughes. It was not a good experience for Jennifer, probably the one that most makes her cringe. People Magazine complained that the movie exploited her body and the advertising confirmed their view. One advert was a cardboard stand-up, taken from a scene involving a mechanical horse, where Whaley is staring at Jennifer and the words read "He's about the have the ride of his life".

. Jennifer, though, had other worries. In the autumn of 1990, she'd enrolled at Yale, majoring in English. She'd wanted to keep her anonymity but, unfortunately, her room-mate had seen Labyrinth and spilled the beans. She stuck it out for two years (working where possible), then switched to Stanford University in California, where she studied drama, classical theatre and improvisation under Howard Fine, Harold Guskin and the late, great Roy London.

Studying hard, she didn't work much in the mid-Nineties. There was The Heart Of Justice, where Eric Stoltz played a reporter drawn into the suspicious and possibly disgraceful affairs of a wealthy Upper East Side family. Jennifer played the beautiful daughter around whom the dodginess swirled, and there were also appearances by Hopper, Dermot Mulroney (who'd co-starred in Career Opportunities) plus Vincent Price and William H. Macy.

Next came Isabel Allende's Of Love And Shadows where, alongside Antonio Banderas, Connelly played a well-to-do Chilean woman under the rotten rule of Margaret Thatcher's friend General Pinochet. Then - her Brooklyn Heights upbringing and Yale education clearly coming into their own - she played another aloof character, this time the lesbian mentor of Kirsty Swanson in John Singleton's Higher Learning.

Now out of Stanford (she maintains she'll return one day to complete her degree), she really moved ahead. First she was the siren enticing both Nick Nolte and John Malkovich in Forties' LA in Mulholland Falls. Then, in Far Harbour, she was warm and very human as one of seven youngsters dealing with their issues while spending a weekend on Long Island. This was filmed at Sag Harbour, a former whaling town close to Bellport where she'd spent part of her youth. One co-star was Marcia Gay Harden, who'd team up with her again in (and win an Oscar for) Pollock.

Now came Inventing The Abbotts, where Jennifer impressed as a bad girl alongside Billy Crudup, Joaquin Phoenix and Liv Tyler, as two young boys attempted to court three sisters. Then there was Dark City, a weird-out from Alex Proyas, director of The Crow. Here Jennifer played the wife of Rufus Sewell, a man who wakes into a sunless world to discover he has no memory and is surrounded by people who can make everything stop dead, move things around, and then start everything up again. What the hell is going on, and why is there no way out?

Now her life changed. Having met photographer David Dugan on a rock-climbing expedition in upstate New York, she'd begun an active relationship that saw the couple tackling the Grand Tetons of Wyoming and Mount Shasta in California. It also produced baby son Kai, whose imminent arrival Jennifer announced on the Rosie O'Donnell Show. Connelly claims Kai has caused her to really take stock of her life and career.

He certainly seemed to have helped. Next Connelly appeared in Waking The Dead, directed by Keith Gordon, himself the child star of Dressed To Kill and Stephen King's Christine. Here she played an idealistic activist who disappears, presumed dead, while helping the Chilean Resistance - to the disappointment of her lover, played by Abbotts co-star Crudup. Imagine his reaction when, years later, he's a candidate for Congress and she reappears. There was also a small role here for Ed Harris, who'd co-star with Connelly in both her breakthrough movies.

First, though, there was degradation and horror - her first taste (if you discount Career Opportunities) since Creepers. In Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream, Jennifer played one of several people dragged down the dustpipe by heroin addiction. By way of research, she joined Aronofsky and co-star Jared Leto on their trips to New York's Lower East Side, where they watched real-life junkies doing their intravenous business. She was not, according to Aronofsky, fazed at all. Indeed, Requiem seemed to draw Connelly out as she threw herself into her character's terrible descent. At one point, her character now a drug-addled prostitute, she performed a naked lesbian floorshow, complete with sex toys, before a roomful of baying businessmen. The scene won the film an NC-17 rating but Aronofsky refused to alter it - he said he had to show how low you can go.

For Requiem, Jennifer received an Independent Spirit nomination, then moved on to play Ed Harris's mistress Ruth Klingman, in Pollock. Next she played tough brokerage supervisor Catherine Miller in TV series The Street, a role she accepted because it was close to her Manhattan home AND the producers provided a playroom for young Kai.

And then came the big one - A Beautiful Mind. Here she was Alicia Nash, the super-smart wife of Russell Crowe's John Nash, the real life mathematician who suffered breakdown due to schizophrenia yet came back to win the Nobel Prize in 1994.

"Alicia is the person," said Connelly "who's trying to ground John Nash in reality and bring him home, literally, and back to what he was". Co-starring, as said, was Ed Harris. Directing was Ron Howard, who'd produced Inventing The Abbotts and publicized the movie with Jennifer. Everyone recognised that the upbringing that had caused her to be cast, in her late teens and early twenties, as a wealthy sex-pot now really helped her be convincing in the world of academia. Having spent years in the wilderness, trying to reinvent herself, now she was awarded a Golden Globe, a BAFTA AND an Oscar. One drawback, though. Attending the readings for A Beautiful Mind, she discovered that everyone, but EVERYONE smoked. So she started herself - at 30. Tut tut.

. Beyond the awards and the recognition, A Beautiful Mind introduced her to co-star Paul Bettany and the couple would marry in January, 2003. Connelly would bear son Stellan (named after actor Stellan Skarsgard) some four months later and, in order to properly raise the boy, she would now keep her work-load to a minimum. 2003 would see two previously filmed efforts. First would be Hulk, Ang Lee's thoughtful take on the comic saga, where Connelly would play Betty Ross, research scientist and former girlfriend of Eric Bana's tortured Bruce Banner, who struggles to help him find a cure for his unusual green condition, all the while battling her military father, a general who's committed to killing the monster. Like Fay Wray in King Kong, Betty's the only one who can soothe the savage beast but, with the script delving deeply into the relationships between children and their parents, Connelly was not simply there to provide a pretty face.

Very different would be her other 2003 release, House Of Sand And Fog. A literary adaptation, this would see her as an abandoned wife who loses her inherited family home in a mix-up over death duties. Snapping it up is immigrant Ben Kingsley who's seeking a home for his own displaced and fallen family. Emotionally unstable, Connelly cannot let the house go, it's too closely tied to her sense of pride and tradition, and neither can Kingsley who's working insanely hard to rebuild such a sense for himself. And so, while exploring two very different American cultures and the very different ways in which they're treated, the story slides towards conflict and terrible tragedy. Critically lauded, the movie would see Kingsley's Oscar-nominated for the fourth time.

Connelly would not reappear in cinemas for another two years and then her chosen vehicle would come as a surprise. This was Dark Water, a remake of Hideo Nakata's 2002 original and, following Ring and The Grudge, it promised to be a fairly seedy exploitation of Far Eastern ingenuity. But it's always a good idea for horror directors to cast great actors and have them take the craziness seriously. They can fill the gaps with real feelings and force the audience to take it all seriously too.

So it was with Connelly and Dark Water where she played another abandoned wife seeking accommodation. This time, though, broke and desperate to keep a roof over her daughter's head, she's forced to shack up in a dark, damp flat marked by mysterious stains. Now her daughter makes a sinister imaginary friend, the leaking begins and Connelly is driven to the edge of sanity, not playing a traditional screamer but a threatened mother.

. 2006 would see her return to suburbia with Little Children. Directed by Todd Field of In The Bedroom fame and based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, this would concern young parents seeking an identity inside and outside their family lives. Kate Winslet would appear as an unhappy mum whose husband is addicted to Internet porn and who turns to a local house-husband for affection. He, in the meantime, is married to a driven Jennifer, a documentary film-maker who's demanding that he stop trading on his former High School glories and embark on a legal career. Her character would appear to have it all - a career, a family, ambition -but appearances can be deceptive, particularly in the movies.

Life's looking good all round. Connelly spends time with her dad back in Woodstock, and with her mum, who's a craniosacral massage therapist at California's Esalen Institute (they divorced some time ago). She indulges her interest in quantum physics and philosophy, and loves swimming, gymnastics, hiking and camping. Long recognised as one the best-looking actresses in Hollywood (Disney actually based Aladdin's Jasmine on her), Jennifer Connelly can now lay claim to being one of its best actresses, full stop.

Dominic Wills