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Jennifer Connelly: The Q Interview
By Demetrios Matheou
Independent
27 February 2002
Jennifer Connelly was 11 when she made her first film, Once Upon a Time in America. Two years later she appeared opposite David Bowie in the fantasy epic Labyrinth. She went on to act in several independent films, including The Hot Spot, Inventing the Abbotts and Requiem for a Dream. Now 31, she has received her first Oscar nomination for her role in A Beautiful Mind. She lives in New York with her young son Kai.
In A Beautiful Mind you play John Nash's wife Alicia. He was quite an eccentric man, even before the schizophrenia became obvious. What do you think Alicia saw in him?
I think that she was a formidable intellect in her own right. She was unusual herself. She went against the grain as a woman in the 1950s by studying physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where there were not many women. So she was very much an independent spirit herself.
Are you into science?
In high school I was into quantum physics. I had a great physics teacher who made a huge impression on me. Then I went to Yale and thought I'd be a physics major, but I soon found myself in "office hours" &endash; you know, for students who needed extra attention. So, I thought, maybe not. I joined a club called Physics for Poets instead.
Talking about science, how did you find the chemistry with Russell Crowe?
I think we worked well together. In fact I enjoyed it so much that whenever we finished a scene I'd ask [director] Ron Howard if we could do some more takes. Just for the fun of it.
Crowe's got a reputation as something of a ladies man...
Oh, women are mad for him. We went to a press conference the other day and the journalists in the front row &endash; I could see them &endash; they all had their personal video cameras pointed on him the whole time. One of them had this glossy fan book called Russell Crowe. I mean, the journalists!
What's his appeal do you think?
I don't know. He's got a kind of raw energy. He's a commanding presence and takes up a lot of space. He walks into a room and you feel him. He's got that just-off-the-farm swagger; it's a very macho sort of energy that is kind of primal. Maybe that's what those women are responding to.
You once described yourself as a "walking puppet". What was that about?
Did I say that? It seems an apt description. I'm always critical of myself. But you can imagine what it must feel like to be very young and constantly having people telling you what to do, how to behave and what's expected of you. People are trying to live vicariously through you. I was a kid who really needed an emancipation period, who really needed to be a teenager. And I didn't start exploring that need until I was in my twenties.
A Beautiful Mind seems to be your breakthrough movie. Do you feel it's overdue?
You know, I've been working for a long time &endash; 20 years. But when I started I was just a child, I wasn't an actor. I was 14 or 15. People kept casting me and I didn't really know what I was doing, I was just taking it for granted. So there was a period when I wasn't happy with the movies I was making and it took a bit of time to get myself into the niche that I wanted. But I don't think I was this fantastic actress who was being neglected &endash; I had the career I deserved at the time.
Where were you when you learned you'd been nominated for an Oscar?
I was sitting in my hotel room in Berlin. I was there for the film festival.
So what's it like, being a working mother?
It's a balancing act. For example, at the Berlin Festival &endash; I wanted to go, but when I got there I felt like I was missing out on something at home. So on the one hand it's hard but on the other I don't think I would be doing this quality of work if it hadn't been for my son. He's changed me. He's helped me to understand myself and find my own place in the world.
His father is the photographer, David Dugan...
Yes. We split up a few years back, when Kai was just a baby, but we raise him together, which I'm grateful for. He's very much a part of Kai's life. They spend time together every other weekend. And once a week David comes over to our house and we all cook dinner together.
Are you seeing someone else now?
I have a boyfriend, [actor] Josh Charles, who I've been with for a couple of years.
Why did you choose the name Kai?
It's Hawaiian, it means ocean. David used to live in Hawaii and it just struck us. We had been looking at Irish names, but when he was born he was so exotic looking, so dark and beautiful with these almond eyes, and I was like, "Oh, that doesn't look like a Liam". At the time I was feeling downright loopy. I thought here is the most extraordinary being the planet has ever seen. He's so exquisite he can't have a normal, pedestrian name. It has to be something jewel-like. I'm glad they stopped me at Kai.
Do you take him along to film shoots?
It depends on the film: he came less on Requiem for a Dream than he did on A Beautiful Mind, because my hair and make-up alone on that movie terrified him. But we're about to go to Los Angeles for four months, to do The Hulk with Ang Lee. Kai's coming with me. We're getting a house and he has been signed up for a new school, so he can have his own little social life.
Why have you decided to do a film based on a comic book?
I'm very excited to work with Ang Lee. He's a great film-maker. The Ice Storm was one of my favourite movies. It seems like an odd match: The Hulk and Ang Lee. But he sees the film as a family psycho-drama with hints of Greek tragedy!
'A Beautiful Mind' is on release in cinemas nationwide
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