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Jennifer's Beautiful Run
by Douglas Rowe
Transcript by Adam
The West Australian
Monday, March 18, 2002
With Oscar-magnet A Beautiful Mind under her belt, Jennifer Connelly is well clear of the B-movie bracket, she tells Douglas Rowe.
JENNIFER CONNELLY sips her tea, talks about the wonderful time she's having in the wake of A Beautiful Mind and credits Waking the Dead with shaking her career to life. That 2000 movie "marks the beginning of this kind chapter" in which she's snagging challenging roles in interesting movies. "I mourned the wrapping of that movie like a the loss of some great relationship that you know can't go on but you know it's really sad that it has to end," says Connelly.
She went on to play the painter's mistress in Pollock and a junkie who debases herself for drugs in Requiem for a Dream. (She squeezed the short-lived Fox series The $treet in between).
Then she convinced director Ron Howard during an audition with Russell Crowe that she could hold her own against the formidable actor in A Beautiful Mind.
"Russel is a very storng presence and I wanted someone who was going to be comfortable on the set and not in any way overwhelmed or intimidated by the process or anyone she was working with," Howard said in a telephone interview.
So after nearly two decades of mostly B(ad)-movies, the 31-year-old actress is culminating her run of fine performances by collecting an armful of awards.
She already has a Golden Globe, a Bafta (a British Oscar), and honours from the American Film Institute and Online Film Critics Society, and she's the odds-on favourite to win the supporting-actress Oscar on March 24. Connelly is simultaneously self-contained and self-effacing. She says she realised about four years ago that something had to change in her career.
Her forgettable films include Labyrinth, Career Opportunities and The Hot Spot. "I found myself looking at the movies that I like to watch, and the movies that I had done, and they weren't necessarily the same kinds of films," she says, chuckling.
"It just came to a point where I thought: 'You know, I don't want to work unless I'm working on things that I feel really good about at this point'. To me it became torturous to work on projects that I wasn't proud of."
Her decision coincided with the birth of her son, Kai, who turns five in July. "I had enough that was keeping me happy in my personal life."
Connelly considers herself something of a late bloomer. "I don't think I turned into a teenager until I hit my 20s," she says. "It just took me longer to feel brave enough, I think, to explore myself and my own life."
She spent two years at Yale and one at Stanford - and even considered other careers - but left college because she "just wasn't approaching it right" and stuck with acting.
And now it's bringing honours, which, she's happy to report, beget work work.
"Other than that, my personal situation is very much the same - taking my son to school in the morning, pack his sandwiches, live in the same place, have the same friends..."
Connelly, who starts work this month on Ang Lee's The Hulk, likes to bring Kai to the set so she can spend time with him.
"For me, vacation is just, no matter where I am, having time to not have to answer the phone or not have to fulfill any kind of obligation other than to be completely present with him," she says. "To me, that's rest, and recovery, and rejuvinating. And I love that."
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