|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Jennifer Lynn Connelly (born December 12, 1970) is an American film actress and former child model. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager and catapulted to fame on the basis of her appearances in films like Labyrinth and Career Opportunities, she did not receive wide exposure for her work until the 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream, and the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. This fresh-faced former child model made her film debut at age 12, seen in flashbacks as the young incarnation of Elizabeth McGovern's character in Sergio Leone's gangster epic "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984). Horror cultists may remember her as the girl who has a peculiar relationship with the insect world in Dario Argento's Italian fear opus "Creepers" (1985). Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains, New York, the daughter of Eileen, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer who worked in the garment industry. Connelly's paternal grandparents were of Irish and Norwegian descent, respectively, while her maternal grandparents were Jewish, their families having come from Russia and Poland. Connelly was raised in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, near the Brooklyn Bridge, attending St. Ann's School, except for four years the family spent living in Woodstock, New York. One of her father's friends was an advertising executive, who suggested that she audition at a modeling agency. At the age of ten, her career started in newspaper and magazine ads, then moved to television commercials. These led to movie auditions and her first film role was as "young Deborah Gelly", a supporting role in Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America, filmed mostly in 1982 when she was eleven. She next starred in Italian horror director Dario Argento's Phenomena (1985) and in the coming-of-age movie Seven Minutes in Heaven. Jennifer Connelly subsequently was featured in mostly forgettable teen fare, with the possible exception of Jim Henson's "Labyrinth" (1986), in which she was overshadowed by David Bowie and a cast of Henson creatures. That same year she was the bright one among a trio of friends--Byron Thomas, Maddie Corman--in the lightweight "Seven Minutes in Heaven". Connelly traded on her attractive looks as the only innocent among Southern schemers in Dennis Hopper's thriller, "The Hot Spot" and as the voluptuous town beauty in the teen comedy "Career Opportunities" (both 1990). She was perfectly cast as a 1940s Hollywood starlet who got the guy in "The Rocketeer" (1991; Connelly and co-star Bill Campbell also enjoyed an off-screen relationship as well). Connelly became a star on her next picture, the fantasy Labyrinth (1986) playing Sarah, a teenager who wishes her baby brother into the world of goblins ruled by goblin king Jareth (David Bowie). The film disappointed at the box office, but gained a huge cult following. Connelly starred in several obscure films, such as Etoile (1988) and Some Girls (1988). The Dennis Hopper-directed The Hot Spot (1990) was not a success, either critically or commercially. Another film, Career Opportunities, was more successful and is considered a teen cult classic. It and Hot Spot threatened to typecast her in the "sexpot" stereotype with both films emphasizing her voluptuous figure, particularly Hot Spot, which contained her first topless scene. It would be the first of seven movies in which she appeared nude. Connelly was featured on the cover of Esquire in August 1991, as part of the "Women We Love" feature. The big-budget Disney film The Rocketeer (1991) similarly failed to ignite Connelly's career; after its failure she took some time off from acting. The 1996 indie film Far Harbor played her against type and hinted at a much broader range than she had previously shown. Connelly began to appear in smaller but well-regarded films, such as 1997's Inventing the Abbotts and 2000's Waking the Dead. She played a collegiate lesbian in John Singleton's 1995 ensemble drama, Higher Learning. The critically favored 1998 science fiction film Dark City afforded her the chance to work with such actors as Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Ian Richardson and Kiefer Sutherland. Connelly revisited her ingenue image, though in a more understated way, for the 2000 biopic Pollock, in which she played Jackson Pollock's mistress. She appeared alongside Jason Priestley in the Roy Orbison music video for "I Drove All Night" in 1992. Connelly began studying English at Yale, and two years later transferred to Stanford. Although she was seemingly on the verge of a major career, Connelly had difficulty finding that one role to catapult her into the public eye. She stopped performing for a while to pursue an Ivy League education and when she decided to resume her career, it was because she had rediscovered a passion for acting. The actress made a rare foray into TV with the 1993 TNT movie "The Heart of Justice", in which she essayed a femme fatale. John Singleton cast her as an earth mother lesbian in "Higher Learning" (1995) while she opted to play another woman of questionable virtues as Nick Nolte's doomed mistress in "Mulholland Falls" (1996). Connelly's big breakthrough was the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream. Connelly starred alongside Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans as heroin addicts on the edge of a breakdown. The film firmly established her as a serious actress. Connelly next starred in Ron Howard's film A Beautiful Mind (2001), essaying the role of Alicia Nash, the long-suffering wife of the brilliant, schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash (played by Russell Crowe). The film was a critical and commercial success and earned Connelly a Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her appearance in A Beautiful Mind led to a featured article in TIME magazine. Connelly delivered a fine turn as Eleanor, the self-styled bad girl middle sister of a trio of beauties who all succumb to the charms of the town's bad boy (Billy Crudup) in "Inventing the Abbotts" (1997). She next undertook the challenging role of a woman who may or may not be real in the sci-fi thriller "Dark City" (1998). After a brief hiatus for motherhood, Connelly returned to the big screen in force with three high profile art-house films in 2000. She was again a woman of mystery, this time a former radical haunting her old lover (Crudup) in "Waking the Dead." In Darren Aronofsky's harrowing "Requiem for a Dream", Connelly played a wannabe fashion designer with a nasty coke habit who willingly submits to debasement in order to score drugs. She also was the other woman in the life of the abstract artist in Ed Harris' biopic "Pollock." In addition to her busy film career, Connelly made her debut as a series regular in the short-lived NYC-set serial "The $treet" (Fox, 2000), which purported to be a behind-the-scenes look at a brokerage firm. Connelly starred in two films in 2003: Hulk and House of Sand and Fog. Hulk was something of a box office disappointment, but afforded Connelly the chance to work with noted director Ang Lee. House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III, was reminiscent of much of her independent film work of the late 1990s. Connelly appeared in the 2005 horror film Dark Water, which was based on a Japanese film. Connelly next costarred in Todd Field’s darkly comic, but emotionally compelling adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel, “Little Children” (2006), playing the wife of a stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson) who struggles with her husband’s affair with a former graduate student and stay-at-home mom (Kate Winslet). In “Blood Diamond” (2006), Connelly was a feisty and idealistic American journalist in the midst of chaos in civil war-torn Sierra Leone in the 1990s who, while trying to expose the scandal-ridden diamond companies, falls for a smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to find a rare pink diamond with a poor fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) a quest that will change the lives of all three forever. While “Blood Diamond” was gathering Oscar buzz in late 2006, Connelly began filming “Reservation Road” (2007), a tragic tale about two families brought together when the father of one family kills the son of the other in a hit and run accident. In 2006, Connelly appeared in two films, both of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. She played a major role in an adaptation of the novel Little Children alongside Kate Winslet. Though her role as Kathy Adamson is very important in the novel, director Todd Field gave her character less screen time, instead focusing on the characters played by Winslet and Patrick Wilson. She also played a journalist in Blood Diamond opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. She next appeared in Reservation Road with Joaquin Phoenix, which was given a limited release in the fall of 2007. Connelly will next star in a small independent thriller with her husband Paul Bettany, and will have a small role opposite Drew Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You. Connelly is a vegan. She is married to well-known English actor Paul Bettany (born 1971), whom she met while working on A Beautiful Mind. The couple's son, Stellan (named after actor Stellan Skarsgard), was born on August 5, 2003. She also has a son, Kai (born 1997), from her relationship with photographer David Dougan. She is the face of Balenciaga. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Celebrities Guide 
| WhoABC
Home : Disclaimer
: Terms
: Privacy
Policy : Contact
Us : Links All original content Copyright Celebrities Guide, WhoABC.com © 2004 - 2008. All Rights Reserved |