|
'Beautiful' star Connelly finds formula to success
by Bob Strauss (Los Angeles Daily News)
Houston Chronicle
March 26, 2002
[CAP] Jennifer Connelly's portrayal of a schizophrenic genius' wife has made her a sure-thing for the supporting-actress Oscar this year.
About the only major Oscar contest that isn't a horse race coming down to the wire is in the supporting-actress category. Jennifer Connelly has virtually owned the statuette since A Beautiful Mind opened in December, for her pitch-perfect portrayal of Alicia Nash, the long-suffering wife of schizophrenic math genius John Forbes Nash (Russell Crowe).
Winner of the Golden Globe and American Film Institute awards in the category (although it can be argued that she is the film's leading lady, the Screen Actors Guild erroneously ran her in their best-actress race), Connelly comes to her first Oscar nomination after a career as a child model, more than 20 movie appearances over the last 18 years, several television series and years of education at Yale and Stanford.
Yet for all of her experience, intelligence and beauty, the 31-year-old actress has usually found herself headlining genre movies (Phenomena, Labyrinth, The Rocketeer, Dark City) or films that tended to focus on her physical attributes (The Hot Spot, Mulholland Falls, Seven Minutes in Heaven, Some Girls, Requiem for a Dream).
"Jennifer is an extraordinary actress," co-star and fellow Oscar nominee Crowe enthuses. "I think she's done a magnificent performance in this film. It's possibly in areas, psychologically and in purity, that she hasn't been to before. But that's really about opportunity. She's done a lot of work over her life, deserved the opportunity of playing a role like this and has done a magnificent job."
REAL GENIUS
To create such a complex, realistic character, Connelly felt it was vital to, if not mimic the real thing, at least garner something like that character's approval.
"I asked to meet Alicia before we started shooting," says Connelly, who was raised and still lives in New York. "I went out to Newark, N.J., where she works, and had lunch with her. I just personally wouldn't have felt comfortable doing this project if I hadn't at least talked to her; I wanted to say, 'Is there anything, in representing you, that you would like to see me convey -- or not convey about you, that I otherwise might?' She was just very excited about the whole project and gave me her blessings. But ultimately, I took more of the biographical information from the book."
Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash, also titled A Beautiful Mind, has been a source of much contention since the movie came out and made its way along the Oscar trail (the film has eight nominations, including ones for best picture, director Ron Howard and screenplay adapter Akiva Goldsman). The creative team claimed from the beginning that their movie was based on the Nashes' story but highly fictionalized, and Nasar herself has avowed that many of the attacks on the film's accuracy have stemmed from misinterpretations of facts in her book. Nonetheless, the film's accusers have said the adaptation whitewashes Nash's infidelity, homosexuality and anti-Semitism, as well as key details of a marriage that fell apart and was only reconstructed after years of separation and unwed cohabitation.
For her part, Connelly never viewed the job as an impersonation.
"You know, our story is really inspired by the events of their lives, and by these people," the actress says. "Similarly, our Alicia is really a departure from her. Ultimately, I just sort of made my own character."
Connelly acknowledges that the rich material was a great help in creating what she always viewed as a classic supporting performance.
"It's a powerful, moving love story, and a very adult, human love story," she says. "I know that, for Alicia, she had her sights set on him for a while, he was a big man on campus. And he was a man whose greatest pursuit was an original idea, and I think that was incredibly intriguing to her. It's a story of genius and struggles with mental illness and marriage, and ultimately triumph."
Even if the unthinkable happens and she comes away empty-handed Sunday night, Connelly feels like she's already won something valuable: a recently arrived-at seriousness of purpose in her profession.
"On so many levels, it's such a great vocation," she says of acting. "At its best -- and fortunately, on the last few projects I've done, I've had a wonderful time and felt very inspired -- it's an opportunity to learn about different sides of life, of humanity and different kinds of people, and explore myself. It's like going on some psychological archaeological dig, every project. I have an opportunity to really call on all parts of myself in my work; it's just very fulfilling."
NOT HER CHOICE
Connelly claims that she doesn't really recall how or why she got involved in show business. Ad-men friends of her father, who was in the garment industry, got the young Jennifer into child modeling. Somehow, that resulted in her first movie audition, for the period gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America. She got the job.
"It was different back when I started working, when I was 11," the actress admits. "It wasn't something that I chose for myself, it was something that sort of happened. I certainly wouldn't have said that's why I was doing it then. Then, it was a fun thing to do after school, I got to go to Italy and that was great, and Sergio Leone was really nice ... It was a different story, and up till fairly recently. It's been an interesting transformation."
A major factor in that transformation was becoming a parent 4 1/2 years ago. Renewed as her passion may have become for acting, Connelly is first and foremost mother to her son, Kai. A single mom (the boy's father is photographer David Dugan; Connelly has most recently been romantically linked to Sports Night star Josh Charles), she notes that everything in her life is different now.
"I'm really happy with my life, and a lot of that is becoming a mother and my relationship with my son," she says. "With that, I felt, I had to take responsibility, in subtle ways, for myself and my behavior, what translates in what I say and what I do. It's really a catalyst for growth. I feel things in a way that I've never felt before. I feel for other people in a way that I was never able to feel before. He's brought me out of myself in literal ways and in internal, more profound ways."
Sounds award-worthy to us.
|
