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The Real Thing
By Elizabeth Angell
V magazine
Winter 2005 /2006
The Real Thing
The beautiful and insanely talented actress Jennifer Connelly rules Hollywood by owning herself. These eyes don’t lie, but they do spend a lot of time playing tough, defiant women and watching her own husband and children in her role out of the spotlight
These days people are famous for a lot of reasons - the celebs they date (then dump, marry or divorce); the children they adopt; the best friends they alienate; the TV shows they cavort on-sometimes for nothing more than an infamous last name.
Jennifer Connelly seems like the rarest kind of famous person. People know her for her prodigious talent.
Connelly has been acting since she was 13 years old and has worked with directors as diverse as Sergio Leone, Ron Howard, Ang Lee, and Walter Salles. In 2001, she won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and she has spent the last five years as the best thing in movies as diverse as The House of Sand And Fog, Hulk and last summer’s Dark Water. Though she knows her way around a Balenciaga dress, she doesn’t frequent clubs or stalk red carpets unless she owes it to one of her own projects to pose for a few photographers. She lives in a Brooklyn neighborhood known more for its Saturday stroller derby than its hip bands, and she spent most of her off time with her husband of almost three years, British actor Paul Bettany, and her two children, Kai, 8 and Stellan, 2. Though she doesn’t make the scene in Hollywood often, the actress remains beloved by auteur directors and celebrity journalists alike.
Despite her leading-lady status, Connelly will even take supporting roles when the right ones come along. This spring, she’ll appear in director Todd Field’s Little Children, backing up Kate Winslet and playing the wife in Angels in America’s Patrick Wilson. It’s hard to imagine Connelly as a harried and cuckolded suburban mom-but we’ll just add that to her already long list of difficult roles.
EA: Did you like taking a supporting role for your current project, Little Children? Was the pressure off after carrying Dark Water?
JC: I really just look for scripts that strike me for various different reasons. I look for stories that I think are interesting - parts that are interesting. I’m really happy to do a film like Dark Water. I had a wonderful relationship with Walter [Salles] and had a great time doing it.
EA: What interested you about Kathy, your character in Little Children?
JC: When I first read the script, I got a little ways into it and I still didn’t know what I thought of this woman. It’s easy to misunderstand what she’s about. She’s a working mother, and she’s in that situation where she just doesn’t have that much time in the morning or at the end of the day. A lot of time, her interactions with her husband become quite practical and it’s easy to misunderstand her need to get through the logistics of the household for distraction or coldness. But she’s actually an incredibly loving, adult, mature, woman. You don’t find that out till the end of the film. So I thought she was interesting. I think she’s sort of a modern matriarch. At first glance, she wears pants and she goes to work, but she’s very much a mother and she struggles to balance motherhood and family.
EA: The book and the movie are both about becoming adults and whether we choose what we become or whether it happens more passively. Do you think having kids makes you and adult - or getting married or buying a house?
JC: I think a family provides an opportunity to grow up but it’s like anything in life. They provide an opportunity to rise to the occasion. They can also be used the other way, I suppose, as an excuse to say, ‘Oh this is too much. I can’t handle this.’”
EA: In Little Children, there’s a lot of tension between those parents who work,
mostly the fathers, and the parents who stay home, mostly the mothers. Do you ever wish you could stay home all the time?
JC: I have a really good job. I can work and then I get to spend a lot of time hanging out with my family. I have moments when I think, ‘Oh god, I’d love to just have a really simple life and not ride on airplanes.’ Everything seems to move so quickly. But that said, I wouldn’t want my whole existence to be about my children. Being a mother is so much a part of what I do everyday and who I am. I love them so much, but I think it’s good for all of us that Paul and I both have other things that we are interested in outside of the house, that fulfil us and are challenging and creative. I think there’s a cost to life that my character and her husband come to realize: you have to live within your own means. People can live all different kinds of lifestyles as long as they can bear the cost of what it takes to get there. And when I say the cost I don’t necessarily mean financial. It’s just being aware and being at peace with what you pay for your choices.
EA: The novel has some very funny passages about neurotic moms who put their kids through their paces. Are you of the strict parenting school or do you take a more relaxed approach?
JC: I think that boundaries are good for kids. I think that kids are kids and they need to be allowed to be kids. I’m not strict about a lot of things. The other day, Kai dropped something and he said, “shit!” I didn’t really have a problem with it. My husband and I both tend to curse a lot. But I said to him, “Look, you can’t talk like that in school because other grown-ups find it offensive. However, it doesn’t offend me. What does offend me is if you don’t respond to someone if they’re asking you a question, or if you are rude to someone, or you say something mean to someone.” I see countless examples of kids being rude to each other, to their parents, and it goes completely unchecked. Then they say “shit” and their moms are outraged.
EA: Its’ cool that he’s able to understand those kinds of distinctions.
JC: He’s just really precocious. He uses words like “disconcerting”. Paul was teasing him the other day and he said, “don’t antagonize me”. I thought, that’s a good word. Kai started talking at 2, and he even talks in his sleep and he hasn’t stopped.
EA: After college, you’ve said that you went through a period where you weren’t sure if you wanted to act anymore. Did you think in your early 20’s that you would be getting roles like this and so much acclaim for them?
JC: I think I had a hard time imagining too far into the future. In my early 20’s, I just wanted to get more comfortable. I wasn’t really thinking, “Ooh, will I one day be married with children? Will I one day have an Oscar?” I don’t think I thought to ask myself those questions. I just thought, this is uncomfortable. How do I get more comfortable?
EA: What helped you be more comfortable?
JC: I just sort of made a decision. I was doing the wrong kind of movies and I was not working in the right way. I didn’t feel like I was in control of my own career. A lot of it was just sort of rearranging things in my head and then deciding that I really needed to apply myself and not to do jobs just to do them. I got to the point where I thought, if I don’t find things that I really want to do, then I will do something different. I wasn’t comfortable with the cost. I was too unhappy. I felt self-conscious.
EA: Is that part of the reason you live in Park Slope and not Los Angeles?
JC: I don’t mind spending time in Los Angeles. We have friends who have this beautiful house in Laurel Canyon and I go to hang out there by the pool and it’s nice weather and they’ve got this nice deck out back and that’s just a nice lifestyle. But it’s such a mono-industrial town; it’s too compartmentalized for me. And you spend all this time in your car. I love getting from point A to point B through the streets.
[Connelly is interrupted by a dreadlocked young man who compliments her on A Beautiful Mind, saying it’s one of his favorite movies.] That was nice.
EA: Does that happen often?
JC: I guess so, yeah.
EA: New Yorkers pride themselves on not doing that kind of thing, though.
JC: Yeah, I mean I ride the subway and it’s fine.
EA: Is there anyone you get star-struck by?
JC: No, I don’t really have that thing. I think because I started working so young. But just recently, this summer, I went to the Live Aid concert and Stevie Wonder was there and I don’t know what came over me but I met him and he hugged me and I tried to speak and I was completely tongue-tied. I was like those girls at Beatles’ concerts, screaming and crying. I just completely unraveled. I figured it was just best not to talk, so I nodded a lot. That was really surprising. I think it was the combination of being hugged by someone like that who has a whole different relationship to touch. And he has written some great songs. ‘Songs in the key of life’ - there are some pretty great songs on that album. I mean, I’ve got T-shirts with Stevie Wonder on them. He’s just cool. Once in a while I have that thing with really famous people where you can’t imagine that they would know you. I remember I met someone incredibly famous, I can’t remember who, and the person said, “Oh, I’ve met you before.” And I thought, how would you remember if you met me before?
How do you even know who I am? You think to people that famous, you must be invisible.
EA: Do you like the non-acting parts of your job-fashion for instance?
JC: As I get older I mind it less and less. I used to want to be a granola girl and sleep in a tent and hide from it all. But I think I’ve mellowed out a bit and found a middle ground. But I’ve never been a good shopper. I went shopping recently when I was in London, and I had a really good time. It was so bizarre. I went home and I said to Paul, “I went shopping today!” And he was incredulous. He said “You did what?” It’s just not something that I do frequently; I get overwhelmed doing it. That said, I do like nice clothes.
EA: When you get dresses from designers, do you talk to them about what you want?
JC: I don’t usually have dresses made. I have done it for some things, for bigger events, but more often, if I go to things like a premiere, I’ll just borrow something. But when I have had things made, it’s usually based on something that the designer has already done. It’s not like I say, “Look, Nicolas [Ghesquiere], I know you usually have this kind of aesthetic, but I’m thinking feathers.” Or “I’m thinking massive sequins and my midriff showing.”
EA: What designers do you like these days?
JC: Well, obviously Balenciaga. I wear a lot of Nicolas’s stuff, and he’s a friend. I think he is great. Alexander McQueen makes beautiful dresses. I like Rochas, I like Lanvin. I like Dries Van Noten … I’m not very good at this.
EA: That’s great, a very solid list.
JC: How did I do?
EA: Very well. I think they’re the big hits of the season.
JC: Oh, good
EA: What’s next for you? Is there anyone in particular that you really want to work with?
JC: I’m not sure. I’ve really enjoyed working in the last few years. I’d love to be able to keep doing different kinds of parts and working consistently. I’d really be happy doing that.
EA: Before you turn 40 and get cast as the grandmother…
JC: Yeah, maybe I have till’ I’m 41. Then I’ll start playing boys.
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