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Jennifer's from Heaven
by Eve Claxton
Tatler Magazine
May 1, 2002
She's done what we'd all love to do to Russell Crowe - stand up to him. And she's got a beautiful mind all of her own. Jennifer Connelly has earnt her awards, says Eve Claxton
"I have never kissed Russell Crowe," explains Jennifer Connelly, quietly and slowly, to make sure I've got the message. "Yes you have!" I insist. "You kissed him in A Beautiful Mind." She replies in a tone that's equally soft and magnanimous. "No. My character kissed his character. It's not the same thing." Asking Jennifer Connelly whether Russell Crowe is a good kisser would be silly because Connelly is evidently not the kind of actress who gossips about fellow actors. During interviews, and she's done lots of late, she doesn't gush, isn't giddy and doesn't exaggerate for the sake of a good story. Ron Howard, her director on A Beautiful Mind, is "a very nice guy and an extremely talented film-maker". The nominations and awards are "immensely flattering". Acting is "an interesting excuse for self-exploration". Each answer is given after a careful pause for consideration, politely but firmly. Sometimes she'll "mmm" a bit, or, as you're warming up for a hearty ramble, she'll concede a simple "Yes". Or, perhaps, "No". Connelly may be everyone's favourite new discovery (Ang Lee has just cast her in his latest film) but her cool-headedness and reserve remind you that this is a woman who has been a hard-working actress for nearly 20 years - and a rather serious woman at that.
Connelly, now 31, started acting when she was 11, a fact that surprises many people because, until recently, her roles have been in utterly forgettabie films. A notable exception was her first, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, in which she played Robert De Niro's childhood sweetheart in the flashback sequences. There was also an early starring moment in Labyrinth, the fantasy movie, alongside David Bowie. In the late Eighties, she made some brat packy teen movies, including a John Hughes bomb entitled Career Opportunities. By the age of 20, she was a veteran of nine flims.
But it wasn't untii the end of the Nineties that she began to come into her own as an adult performer, with a trio of parts culminating in her much-awarded performance in A Beautiful Mind. In 2000's Waking the Dead she was uncannily convincing as the ghost of a political activist. In the same year she played the anti-hero's dangerously drug-addicted girifriend in Requiem for a Dream. And then there was A Beautiful Mind, where she put in her now-famous radiant turn as the long-suffering wife of a schizophrenic. These are the kinds of substantial roles that Connelly, a self-confessed perfectionist, has been waiting to get her teeth into for years. When asked if she's proud of any of her pre-adult films, she takes a moment before replying: "I don't think there's really any performance I'm really proud of." But if there was one that she could at least be satisfied with, it would be her award-winning role in A Beautiful Mind. Even playing opposite the scene stealing Russell Crowe - who transforms himself entirely to play John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician tormented by mental illness - Connelly simply shines. She has always been pretty, but Ron Howard can credit himself with being the first director to show us how absolutely beautiful she is: eyebrows that could have been sketched in charcoal by Picasso, the just-upturned nose, impossibly luminous skin and pale, intense eyes. Crowe's characterisation may rely on actorly effects, such as accent, nervous ticks and a stoop, but Connelly's unflappable assurance as his wife Alicia gives the film its best special effect. Alicia's total self-possession is the quality that finally disarms Nash into recovery and often allows Connelly to steal scenes back from Crowe.
"I've noticed people sometimes stumble on their own footing when they come into contact with Russell," says Connelly of her notoriously unpredictable co-star. "He is charismatic, he's opinionated, he's bold, he takes up a lot of space when he walks into a room, and a lot of people are thrown by that." But just as Nash's wife is never totally unnerved by her husband's illness, Connelly knew she couldn't be caught off-guard by Crowe. "It was important for me to hold my own with Russell, both for myself and for the part," she explains before adding: "And really, he's not that intimidating a guy - it's just how you approach him."
Connelly's impressive poise as Alicia translates to her public persona as well. To the Golden Globes she wore a plain black gown, echoing one of the vintage dresses her character wears in A Beautiful Mind, and managed to out-dazzle most of the other actresses. She remained poised on the sudsy Bafta red carpet, where other guests had to keep themselves from slipping on the carpet shampoo frothing in the ram. "Very humbling," remembers Connelly. "I was confident I wouldn't win because I was the only American, so I had no speech prepared. I fumbled my way through. It was kind of a mess." Nonetheless, she did so with perfect charm and made herself the toast of London in the process.
Connelly says she's now keeping her head down to concentrate on the next job. At six o'clock on the morning after our interview she begins rehearsals for Ang Lee's updated version ofthe Marvel super hero series, The Hulk. Although she's not a comic-book fan, Connelly is a Lee devotee, and a chance to work with him led her to put aside any reservations about playing Betty Ross, the love interest of the large green monster. "Right now, the work is a great leveller," she says. "Ang is so creative and ambitious, he has such interesting and challenging ideas. I have all that nervousness that comes with starting over, rather than nervousness about anything else."
Even to play a comic-book character, Connelly is doing her usual thorough homework. For Alicia, she could meet the woman on whom her character was based, scour Nash's biography for information and pour over books on the Fifties and mental illness. For Betty, there only so much background Connelly can find, but she's finding it. She's already made herself an expert on her character's many different incarnations. "There are only six original Marvel comics, but tons of other interpretations," enthuses Connelly. "Betty starts out as a kind of Jackie O figure, and she becomes a kind of comic-book superhero herself - very voluptuous, a femme fatale." She's going to spend some time in a science lab too: "Betty's a scientist and Ang's wife is a scientist, so I'm looking forward to spending a little bit of time with her."
It's hard to get this actress to talk at any length about her life outside work, though she'll admit that she's always been the sensous, studious type. She is an only child. She attended a school for gifted children in Brooklyn, New York, where she grew up. She was studying Chinese at the age of nine and later attended Yale, transferring to Stanford before deciding to return to acting full time. She may one day complete her degree. "I always loved studying and cerebral activity," she admits. Connelly still lives in New York, across the water from her childhood home, with her four-year-old son, Kai. She is separated from Kai's father, photographer David Dugan, and has a new boyfriend, actor Josh Charles. When she's not working, she likes nothing better than hanging out with her son. She loves to travel. She's not much of a shopper, she says, and not much of a socialiser either.
The best, if not only, way to get Connelly to open up is to quiz her about work, not life, so I ask if there is a favourite line from one of her many movies, in the hope that her answer may prove revealing. She thinks about it, again, before answering cautiously: "I don't know why, but I've just got that line going around and around in my head, you know, from the trailer for A Beautiful Mind." The line is Alicia's, spoken to her husband, and it goes: "I need to believe something extraordinary can happen." For Connelly, something extraordinary has already happened - a turnaround in a long career that no one, not even a studious, earnest, unflappable veteran actress, could have ever predicted in a million years.
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