Out of the Labyrinth

 

 

By Chris Hewitt

March, 2002

 

After years as blockbuster eye candy, Jennifer Connelly has finally come of age.

 

Jennifer Connelly has long been a sectret so jealously guarded you suspect Gollum's involvement. Dedicated film fans are aware that the little girl who defied David Bowie and his wig in Labyrinth has, at 31, blossomed into one of Hollywood's finest, with an incandescent talent that rendered the like of The Rocketeer watchable, and lithe, classical movie star beauty that could put extra salt on your popcorn. But for everyone else it's very much been, "Jennifer Who-whatty?". Now, however, that's about to change.

As Alicia Nash, the devoted wife of barm but brilliant mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe) in Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, Connelly contributes a feisty, intelligent, star-making turn. Unless the planets are out of alignment, she will be nominated this month for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Farewell, then, anonymity.

"It's something that is immensely flattering, just even in conversation," says Connelly of all that Oscar talk. "But it's all just speculation, so that seems like kind of shaky ground. I'm trying to stay with what I know, which is I worked on A Beautiful Mind and loved it. It felt like such a blessing."

History has taught us that few would describe the Russell Crowe Experience as a "blessing". And indeed, Connelly admits that she began smoking during filming. But Russell, it seems, is innocent. "We had a great working relationship," insists a now nicotine-free Connelly. "But the table read-through was the most intimidating read-through of all time. Each table was, like, 20-feet long, and Russell was there, and Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany, Ron Howard and (producer) Brian Grazer, and everyone lights up, and I'm like 'Ohmigod, where're my cigarettes?' It wasn't Russell, it was the nature of the work."

It's lucky Connelly isn't fazed by surly behemoths, because next she's working with the biggest and surliest of them all: The Hulk, in which Connelly will star alongside Eric Bana as Betty Ross, love interest for Ol'Greenskin. It's a film that will redefine, and thus seems incongruous with, Connelly's career battleplan.

"But it's Ang Lee," she counters. "That's a whole different ballgame. He's talking about Greek tragedy, and a psychodrama, and it's about memories and rage. He's looking at it in all the ways I find interesting."

The Oscar/Hulk double-whammy should finally propel Connelly firmly into Joseph Public's consciousness. But why the big deal?

"I started working when I was so young," she levels. "I was 11, and I went through periods where I was taking for granted that this was what I did," explains the former child star. "I was like a walking puppet. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was."

Connelly's early work - yes, even Dario Argento's Phenomena - perhaps predictably embarrasses her, but she's very much a subscriber to the Noddy Holder, "Look to the future now" school of philosophy. "I think of those movies as looking at old yearbook photos, where you recognize the features, but otherwise it's like, 'OhmiGod, what was going on?" she laughs. Feeling that if she ever saw a camera again it would be too soon, she went to Yale, and later Stanford, to study English and Drama. She then resumed acting, but it was the 1997 birth of son Kai, to (now ex-) lover photographer David Dugan, that kick-started Connelly's career.

"Things definitely came together after I had my son," she admits, lapsing into a line from e.e. cummings' Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond: "'No-one, not even the rain, has such small hands.' That makes me think of Kai, the way he's reached inside me with his small hands. It's been my choices, but also the changes within myself, I think."

Connelly's Clooney-esque vow of quality led to the likes of Dark City, Waking the Dead and Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, before Ron Howard came-a-calling. Yet convincing casting directors to look beyond those baby browns, celebrated bosoms and dodgy early films wasn't easy, initially.

"There was a conception of me that obviously connected back to the work I had done, which I felt very disconnected from. So that was a strange period, trying to reform that image, and get things more in synch with the person I know myself to be."

She seems to have managed it, finally. The secret is out: Jennifer Connelly is here to stay, and that's just - shall we say - beautiful.