Professional Praise Squeezes Connelly's Personal Life

 

By Bob Strauss

Los Angeles Daily News

June 25, 2003

 

Jennifer Connelly phones from her apartment in New York.

From her 5-year-old son's room, to be more precise.

"It's dreadful!" the 32-year-old actress says. "I'm actually sitting on Kai's little slide bed in his room because we have no office-with-closed-door sort of thing that can be accomplished in this space. The bathroom is the other place where I sometimes make phone calls. It's a ridiculously small apartment for two people, never mind three and, now, an upcoming fourth."

There is a perceived curse that goes with winning the supporting-actress Academy Award, which Connelly did last year for her portrayal of Alicia Nash, the stalwart wife of a mentally unstable mathematician in 'A Beautiful Mind'. But her current cramped living conditions are anything but the result of bad Oscar juju; Connelly's life has been so busily rewarding over the last couple of years, she just hasn't had time to move.

The new person in the house is English actor Paul Bettany, whom she met when they worked on 'Beautiful Mind' together and married this past New Year's Day. The upcoming fourth is the baby boy they're expecting in August.

And far from the career pall that Oscar has been thought to cast over the likes of Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei, Connelly's follow-up to her award winner is a highly anticipated, big-budget summer entertainment.

But that would just be a matter of pure luck -- the good kind -- from its leading lady's point of view.

"It does matter, because this is my career and I'll be wanting to go back to work before terribly long," notes Connelly, who pre-'Beautiful Mind' was primarily associated with daring, audience-challenging indie fare such as 'Pollock', 'Requiem for a Dream' and 'Inventing the Abbotts'. "I think it's good to have a balance of movies that you do for yourself personally and movies that, hopefully, more people will see.

"But I'm not that business-minded, to tell you the truth. I really did The Hulk because I'd seen The Ice Storm and I wanted to work with Ang Lee. If it turns out to have been a good business decision, that'll be by coincidence."

Blinded with Science

Cerebral director Lee ('Sense and Sensibility', 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'), who cast Connelly in his first big-studio production before 'Beautiful Mind' was released, simply states that there was no better choice for the Hulk role of Betty Ross, a brainy geneticist in love with her lab partner Bruce Banner (played by Eric Bana), who turns into a massive, muscular monster when he gets mad.

"Doesn't take so much ... thinking," Lee says of choosing Connelly, who was educated at Yale and Stanford. But she says that playing scientists is definitely an acting job.

"I had this sort of cocky notion that I would study physics when I first got to Yale," the native New Yorker recalls. "I had a great physics teacher in high school who made me just adore the subject. But while I seemed to exhibit a certain aptitude for it in high school, when I got to Yale I just went crashing down to the bottom of the heap and completely floundered with these kids. So I took the sort of physics-for-poets classes."

Actually, playing some of the Hulk scenes came as close as acting comes to poetic physics. Completely rendered by computer graphics, the big brute was never on set when Betty was supposed to interact with him. And while most of the guys in the cast just had to fight or run from the nonexistent monster, Connelly's scenes required interaction and emotional intimacy.

"To have to keep it in my head to look here when that happens and then look over to the left at that tape mark and that's what's gonna happen over there ... It becomes a much more intellectual thing where you have to keep so much in your head," she notes. "I guess there's no right or wrong response to that sort of thing. Truth be told, the majority of my scenes are with Eric, or with Nick Nolte or Sam Elliott, real people. That's sort of what we're all used to."

Her modesty aside, that's something that Connelly does very well, according to Josh Lucas, who's appeared in both 'Beautiful Mind' and 'Hulk' with her.

"You reference things that make the history of the characters so much more genuine," Lucas says of the second time around. "But that is a hell of a lot easier when you're working with someone who you really like and you really respect."

Fashioning a Career

Connelly has always generated that kind of respect. She started modeling at 10 (her father worked in the fashion industry) and by 14 had been tapped by no less a legend than Sergio Leone to make her movie debut in his gangster epic, 'Once Upon a Time in America'.

Though rarely much of a commercial draw, Connelly's soulful beauty and willingness to explore emotional and physical extremes endeared her to a number of interesting filmmakers, among them stylish Italian horrormeister Dario Argento ('Phenomena'), the late Muppet master Jim Henson ('Labyrinth'), wild man Dennis Hopper ('The Hot Spot') and socially conscious John Singleton ('Higher Learning').

Comic-book movie or not, that all proved necessary training for 'The Hulk"s real acting demands, which went rather beyond pretending a nasty green giant was in the room.

"You're very aware that it's a comic-book movie and that these characters exist in the comic-book world," she explains. "But the characters themselves -- especially Bruce and Betty -- Ang didn't want to be aware that they were in that context. So there's no sort of wink to the audience, they're not played tongue-in-cheek or campy.

"Trying to figure out how to do that was interesting. How do you play straight you've been trying to get your boyfriend to access his emotions, and what comes out is he goes green? That was the most challenging part for me. But it was fun."

But not, probably, the stuff that Oscar nominations are made of. Considering how she felt at the time she won her statuette last year, Connelly might consider that a relief. While naturally pleased with the honor, she's well aware of the criticism she received for reading her acceptance speech from a piece of paper she held on the Kodak Theatre stage in her nervous hands.

She knew it was wrong, too. But she was stuck.

"It was really kind of surreal," Connelly remembers. "It had been the last stop on a long press tour, and I had already started shooting The Hulk; I don't think I've ever been so exhausted in my life! I think I was a bit shellshocked by the whole thing, to tell you the truth. And I remember feeling really shy when they said my name and I had to stand up.

"I had my speech written on a little piece of paper because I was convinced there was going to be a podium that I could've put it down on. But I was the first award, and I didn't know there wasn't gonna be one, so I was thinking, 'Oh my God!' So I tried forgetting about it and just looking up, and the first thing I saw was, 'You have 45 seconds,' and I thought that's not going to work, either. I just remember feeling like such an idiot with my piece of paper.

"But, that said, it's a wonderful honor. I think I went home and slept a lot the next day."

A Beautiful Relationship

The bigger, better 'Beautiful Mind' payoff has, so far, come with no caveats. Connelly and Bettany did not become romantically involved until well after the film had wrapped.

"Oh, we both realized we liked each other very much when we were working together. ... Or, I should say, I liked him, he thought I was all right, or so he says," she recalls with a chuckle. "Anyway, we got to be friends toward the end of the filming. But we were both in other relationships, so we went off and lived our separate lives for a long time. Then we saw each other ages after, and it was different at that point when we were no longer in those relationships."

As for tying the knot, "It is my first marriage," she says. "It's going really great, I have to say. I'm a big fan of the whole marriage thing. I give it big thumbs up."

Connelly's had the same feeling about parenthood from the start.

"My family is the most important thing to me. It's sort of made all the difference to me in terms of work, too, having become a mother. Learning things about myself, learning to take more responsibility for myself and my own life ... I think parenthood kind of demands that. So it really sort of changed the way I do everything.

"And they're always there to remind you of what your shortcomings are," she gratefully says of children. "I mean, there are tons of examples of ways in which I fail and need to do better, of which I'm constantly trying to learn more. It's a great process."

Connelly plans to be in England, where Bettany is shooting a movie this summer, when the new baby arrives.

"I'm so excited. I've gotten to that point where I can't believe I have two more months because I so want to meet him."

But Jennifer, where are you going to put him when you get back?

"We are moving, thank God," she says, announcing that the family has found a larger Manhattan pad. "Assuming all goes as intended, we'll be moving at the end of the summer."