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Beauty to the Beast
By Abbie Bernstein
Hulk Movie Magazine
June, 2003
Acting in 'The Hulk' presented a whole new set of challenges for Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly, both in terms of getting to grips with her character, Betty Ross, and tackling the special effects. Abbie Bernstein hears all about it.
Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Connelly has been acting most of her life, beginning her film career at age 14 as Elizabeth McGovern's younger self in Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America', and starring as the heroine in the Henson fairyland of 'Labyrinth'. Among her many other credits are Dargio Argento's 'Phenomena', 'The Rocketeer' and 'Requiem for a Dream'; she was also a series regular in 'The $treet'. Her performance as the loyal wife of Russell Crowe's brilliant schizophrenic in 'A Beautiful Mind' won her the 2001 Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Connelly wanted to participate in 'The Hulk' even before she knew exactly what the project was, she relates. "I heard that Ang Lee was making this movie and did I want to have a meeting with him? I said, 'Of course.' And then I heard it was The Hulk and thought, 'Wow, that's an interesting combination of elements.' I wasn't a huge comic book reader as a kid, but I did watch the TV show - you know, child of the '70s, it was a huge thing. I wouldn't have thought to put those two (Lee and The Hulk project) together, but I thought it was really intriguing."
Meeting with Lee and reading the screenplay made Connelly even more intrigued by the prospect of playing scientist Betty Ross. "When I talked to Ang, he expressed to me that he wanted to make this a psychological drama and explore the relationships within the families - between Bruce [Banner] and his father [David Banner - Nick Nolte], and Betty Ross and her father [General Ross - Sam Elliott]. So it's the juxtaposition of these really human characters struggling to work out their relationships with one another, and the comic book elements of, 'Well, this guy goes green!' [which is] fantastical and larger than life. I felt like a lot of our work was in trying to strike that balance."
Betty is a character in The Hulk comics, but Connelly explains that the film incarnation is a bit different. "She's a nanobiologist, working in a lab with Bruce, they're partners on this project. She's really adept at what she does and moves through the world easily, [yet] you sense that there's something vulnerable about her, something missing, something slightly broken.
"And then she has this complicated relationship with Bruce, her partner. Where the film starts, [Betty and Bruce] had a romantic relationship, which is no longer going on. She's devastated and still very much in love with him - it's sort of mutual, but [they] just couldn't quite make it work.
"Before the accident [that causes Bruce to become the Hulk]," Connelly continues, "she feels the gist of their problems is that he's very stoic, he can't really be intimate with her. She's very compassionate and loving and maternal in a lot of ways, so they're at odds that way. He had a hard time expressing himself and doesn't really want to remember a lot of his past with his family. Even in the beginning, she's encouraging him to find out more about himself, because she feels that if he were able to explore his memories, he would become more available to not just her, but in life, in human relationships."
Eric Bana's approach to playing Bruce helped Connelly in playing Betty: "He's really lovely to work with," the actress affirms. "He's a really nice guy, he's really good at what he does. He's big and manly-looking and handsome, but there's something caught off-guard in his expression, very vulnerable - inside he looks kind of stuck, kind of scared, which I thought was really a great thing for Bruce."
'The Hulk' reunited Connelly with one of her Beautiful Mind co-stars, Josh Lucas, who plays the villainous Talbot:
'That familiarity was nice to have," Connelly says. "[Lucas] is very sweet - we had a blast doing this."
Playing a scientist called for some research, Connelly reveals: "We went to Caltech [University in California], and I spent a day splitting DNA. Ages ago, when I thought I had some aptitude for science, I thought I'd do something like that - and then got to college and realized it was not my calling," she laughs. "So it was fulfilling some sort of fantasy of mine"
One of the things Connelly likes best about Betty is her courage in the face of startling situations. "When she finally sees [Bruce] as the Hulk, she can recognize that it's him. It's a strange thing to behold, but she doesn't run away screaming, she stands her ground and watches him and is really gentle with him. He really responds when Betty just stands there in front of him and looks at him as if to say, 'I'm here and I understand and I love you and I see you, and it'll all be okay."
Director Lee's view of Betty helped guide Connelly's work, the actress explains: "We talked about it being metaphorical. This woman is struggling for something really sacred and pure, in this world that's so superficial and flat. It's sort of a trope for this flat world that a lot of us live in, [It's a combination of her really being invested in what she's doing, and then packaged in the way that he filmed it. We talked about her being that sort of iconic mother-love character, and also about Betty and Bruce being sort of two halves of the same character. He's very philosophical, Ang, he's really remarkable."
Everyone involved was keenly aware that The Hulk's comic book origins did not mean that the scenes would be played broadly, Connelly adds. "I've seen comic book movies that play into, 'Well, this is a comic book, so it's gonna be sort of tongue-in-cheek and our characters are gonna be aware of the fact that they're in a comic book.' What I liked about Ang's approach is that he didn't want his central characters to feel that way. He really wanted them to be invested in what they were doing.
"My character looks like a girl that you would really see in a lab," Connelly elaborates. "She's not like, lab coat, hair up, glasses. It's a more honest version of what a woman who worked in a lab in Berkeley would be. The way [Lee] shot it from the outside, visually beautiful and quite stylized, the characters will look like they're contained in that universe. And yet from the inside, they're really struggling with very real issues. So I thought that choice was very interesting, that he wanted to play it straight, he took it very seriously. It wasn't a funny set where we threw things away, and, 'Oh, this is all a big joke.' He really played it as if this were a very serious drama. These characters really meant everything that they were struggling for and talking about."
Playing opposite the Hulk meant working with major special effects. Connelly has done so before but, she qualifies, "Not to this extent. Years ago, I did a movie called Labyrinth and we had [Muppet-style] puppetry to deal with and some things that were added later and some blue screen But nothing like this, really. That said, there are a lot of scenes, in the beginning of the movie especially, that are me and Bruce in the lab, conversations where it really was just doing scenes, But that bit [working with the CGI] was very tricky - at times really embarrassing and kind of absurd," she laughs.
Connelly cites some examples: "I'm standing outside and it's the first time I've seen the Hulk, and he's standing before me, and he leans down. We have to establish the eye-lines [where the actor's gaze is directed within the shot, even when there's nothing physically there for the actor to see]. He's gonna be digital, so there's nothing there. To establish the eye-lines where he moves, they have this retractable pole that looks like what you'd skim a pool with and [on top] they've got this cardboard cut-out of a Hulk head, with this crude little drawing of two eyes and a mouth, going like this. Connelly demonstrates the cardboard grimace. "And some guy stands around with this head on a stick, and says, 'Okay, at this point, it's that high, and then it's here.' They do that for me to get a reference of where it's gonna be, and then they take that away when we shoot, and I don't even have that. So it's a little bit absurd."
Somewhere in the CGI test footage that won't be part of the finished film, the Hulk "plays" Connelly: "The guys who are doing the visual effects were showing me some things, just mock-ups and tests of the Hulk doing scenes, basing it on human performances. Just for fun, they took a take of something that I did, and they had the Hulk do exactly what I did, moment for moment. So it was the Hulk as me."
Sometimes Connelly had to be lifted into the air on wires, which will be replaced via CGI by the Hulk's arms. "I kind of like that sort of thing. I got no problem with it - you know, reasonably sturdy kind of gal. To tell you the truth, I really didn't have that much to do on wires, just two nights or something. Okay, the Hulk's picking you up, but in real life, what's happening is I'm sitting there sort of doing Mime 101, going," she gasps, "The Hulks picking me up now,' and then imagining things like the big action sequences that I'm witnessing, explosions, and weapons, airplanes and crashes. The reality of it is, I'm looking at a bunch of pink tape marks on a piece of glass, and listening to the script supervisor say [where] the Hulk is, so it's kind of funny.
"When I think back on the movie," she adds, "I don't think, 'Oh God, that was the movie when I was in wires all the time and did all these special effects.' I found it fun."
Audiences will take to 'The Hulk', Connelly believes: "Because of Ang., it'll be really compelling. If you look at Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, what he brought to it was so beautiful, and so moving, the relationships between the characters, and I think he's going to be able to do that with this, which would be remarkable to do in a comic book movie. And on top of that, of course it'll have these remarkable action sequences and this really well- executed green monster - it'll be fascinating to watch."
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