Russell is so tender. I adore him

 

By Caroline Graham

The Mail on Sunday

February 24, 2002

 

Their onscreen chemistry in the acclaimed film A Beautiful Mind won Jennifer Connelly and Russell Crowe a Golden Globe each and they're hotly tipped for Oscars. Here Jennifer talks about their intense relationship

Walking through the lobby of Los Angeles's Four Seasons hotel, Jennifer Connelly attracts barely a glance from the throng of scurrying staff and glamorous guests. She smiles and says sweetly: 'I like anonymity. It's rather nice not being recognised.' But all that is about to change. In a breakthrough role that is being called the most spectacular 'launch' of a relative unknown since Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Connelly is about to hit the big time.

In A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe's latest film based on the true story of Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, her performance as Nash's loyal but tortured wife has already won her a Golden Globe award as best supporting actress. Connelly and Crowe are certain to feature in the Oscar nominations announced next week.

But Connelly insists that the 'Oscar buzz' over the film, which charts Nash's struggle with schizophrenia and the toll his illness takes on his devoted wife, is premature.

At 31, the slender actress - a former child model - has 'heard the hype before' and says she is keeping her feet on the ground. 'It's all very nice to be told about Oscars and things,' she says in a barely audible voice, 'but I've been in the business long enough to know that the next big thing comes and goes very quickly. I am not that interested in winning prizes. My priority is to do work I'm proud of. And I am very proud of this film.'

Connelly, a single mother of a four-year-old son Kai, is, like the character she plays, a strong woman. Even though the Four Seasons is at the epicentre of what she calls 'the madness of Hollywood', Connelly is unnervingly calm.

As publicists and managers scuttle backwards and forwards, she admits: 'This isn't really me.' She gestures towards her black leather jacket, pinstriped trousers and Dolce and Gabbana boots saying: 'If I didn't have a stylist laying this stuff out for me, I would look a mess. I hate to shop. I'm the worst. I am certainly not a fashionista. I think there are so many pressures on women to be thin and to dress in the latest designer stuff. It's a crazy state of affairs. There are eight-year-olds who are on diets.

'These days, every lifestyle magazine has a half-naked woman on the cover.

I would like to be able to walk down the street and see magazines with mothers and children on the front. But, of course, that isn't going to happen.' Would she ever pose naked?

'No, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. That just isn't me at all.'

Despite her cool exterior, there are cracks in her confidence. 'I am used to rejection because I grew up in this business. I never thought I would get this part. I mean, I knew the audition had gone well because I ended up throwing the pages of the script around the room and crying because I was so in touch with the character. But I honestly thought another better-known actress would get the part. I thought it would go to whoever was perceived as being on top at the time.

'But they called me back the same day and said they were going to cast me.

I was so happy. I knew it was a great role. That's what attracted me to it, not the fact that it would make me a star.' Connelly, who dates Dead Poets Society actor Josh Charles, laughs when asked about rumours that she and Crowe became more than just friends. 'Russell is great but we did not become involved in that way,' she insists.

'He brings a lot to the table as an actor. Like me, he's quite understated and very serious about what he does. We both give our all to a role. He expects so much of himself that it makes you want to achieve more. He and I would always have lunch together and, emotionally, this movie was so intense that we became very close.

'He was very kind, nurturing, tender and protective towards me. We became very intimate, but not in a romantic way. Russell is a good soul but we have two completely different lifestyles and personalities. He is a single man in his late thirties; I am a single mum with responsibilities. I adore him and I would love to work with him again. We had a great rapport in the film.'

Connelly was raised in Brooklyn Heights, New York. She was the only child of a father who worked in the clothing business and a mother who is a massage therapist - and who divorced when she was in her early twenties. 'I don't really know how I got into acting. My parents had some friends who worked in advertising and they offered my mum some modelling work for me when I was about ten and that's how it began.' Connelly then started acting in commercials, though the only one she remembers, she claims, was for Scott toilet tissue.

'I had no aspirations to act. I was never saying, "Mummy, Mummy, I want to act." I was a very shy child. My parents encouraged me to take that path, ultimately. I wanted to make them happy. I would have chosen to be a vet or an oncologist.' When she was 14, her agent put her forward for a small role in Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America. Connelly got the part and spent several months filming on location in Rome, accompanied by her mother. A?eading role opposite David Bowie and a cast of Jim Henson puppets in Labyrinth followed.

'Before I knew it, one part led to another and suddenly acting was what I did. I became superficially mature but was quite stagnated internally. I wasn't crying every night, but I do think it was a pretty strange way to grow up. I want my son to mature first and then decide on a career. I'll support him in whatever he wants to do, unless he chooses to self-destruct, in which case I'll fight him tooth and nail. I just want him to enjoy his childhood for as long as he can.

'By the age of 18 I needed a break from acting so I went to Yale and then Stanford to study English. I never finished my courses. I chose to go back to acting. But when I went back, that was my decision.' In 1991 she appeared in The Rocketeer, which was supposed to launch her career but flopped at the box office. Small parts in other films such as Mulholland Falls and Inventing the Abbotts followed before two performances in 2000, in Pollock and Requiem for a Dream, brought her to the attention of A Beautiful Mind's director Ron Howard and its producer Brian Grazer.

Grazer says: 'Russell is very intense and he can be quite intimidating to someone who is not grounded. I wondered how Jennifer would cope working opposite him but she had an amazing amount of confidence.

'Russell has power and intensity combined with great vulnerability. He can be incredibly seductive and many actresses fall for that and let him dominate them - not Jennifer, though. Russell and Jennifer were living in one another's pockets for four months. You have to be 100 per cent professional in those circumstances; it's like being in prison. The inmates who are wise enough not to get swamped by other inmates survive. The ones who get drawn in get dominated.' Connelly met Alicia Nash, 73, the woman she plays in the film, at the start of the shoot. 'It struck me how incredibly strong and forceful she was,' the actress says. 'I did not want her to think I was going to do an impression of her in the film - it's not a documentary, after all.

I started to explain how I planned to play her but she didn't seem to care much about that. All she wanted to know was if Russell was as handsome in person as he is on the big screen.

'I hope she will be happy with the movie. This woman is a heroine. A firecracker. A beautiful soul.' In A Beautiful Mind, Connelly's character is onscreen for all but about 15 minutes of the film. It was a challenging and draining experience. 'It was hard to maintain that level of intensity for so long,' she admits softly. 'In the film you see Alicia fall apart. She is an extraordinary woman, not just because of the relationship with her husband but in her own right. You see her struggle along the way and you see her dissolve into self-pity and rage. You witness the process of a brilliant woman trying to restructure her life.

'She made a choice [standing by Nash] that many of us would probably have shied away from. He would never have made it without Alicia.

'This is a woman who was forthright, irreverent and ambitious and studying theoretical physics at university in the 1950s. That was simply not done by a lot of women then.' Connelly's portrayal of Alicia, and the screenplay, have attracted controversy in America since the film opened there in December.

Many critics are furious that the real Nash's alleged brushes with homosexuality were erased from the Hollywood version of his life. Connelly says: 'This film is inspired by the story of John Nash and his wife. It's not a re-enactment of their lives. Of course some changes have had to be made.'

Connelly hopes her latest role will inspire the up-and-coming generation of actresses.

'There aren't a lot of stimulating roles for young actresses. They are used merely as set dressing in movies. But my career proves that the roles do get more interesting as you get older. I'm much more engaged in my work now.

For the first time, I feel serious about my career. I've had some brushes with fame in the past, if you will, but I am ready to deal with being a celebrity now. I've waited 20 years for this.' Connelly is more choosy about the roles she takes now. 'I am a fulltime mum as well as an actress. I have to be passionate about my projects or I resent the time I have to spend away from my son. Last year I accepted a part in a television show [The Street, by Sex and the City's creator Darren Star] purely because it was being filmed around the corner from my apartment. But the show wasn't good and I couldn't do anything about that. I was so miserable.' Connelly says motherhood gave her the maturity to perform opposite Crowe. She and Kai's father, photographer David Dougan, remain close for the sake of their son. 'Having a child changed me, of course it did. I look at my son and wonder if this love and the intense feelings I have for him are ever going to wear off. I don't think I could have done this role without being a mother. It has made me feel more raw and protective.

'David and I talk every day and we work closely to give Kai the best life we can. My idea of a good time is to go home at the end of the day and talk to Kai about his day and have a cup of tea.' So she doesn't lead a Hollywood life? 'Absolutely not. I have the same friends I had in high school. I don't socialise with models or spend all my time in fashionable nightclubs. I would never move to LA. I love New York. I lead a very simple existence.' In March, the actress begins filming The Hulk, a big-screen version of the Seventies television series. It will be directed by Ang Lee, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, and star Australian actor Eric Bana as the Hulk.

'This won't be a comic-book film full of big explosions. Ang sees The Hulk as a Greek tragedy. Crouching Tiger wasn't a conventional kung-fu film. This will not be a conventional comic-book film.' Connelly says the strain of working alongside Crowe only manifested itself after they finished filming last summer. 'I'd taken up smoking during the shoot; a disgusting habit. Then I quit and developed laryngitis. I had to stop everything for four or five weeks. I had run myself into the ground. It took me a month before I could recover from this part.' Was it worth it? 'Oh yes,' she says. 'It's a very good film.' And if you won an Oscar? 'Oh please!' And with that, she rises to leave, walking unnoticed back across the hotel lobby.

'A Beautiful Mind', starring Jennifer Connelly, will be on general release from February 22.