It’s sort of startling to read about an actress who is so utterly well-adjusted and down-to-earth as Jennifer Connelly. I would say that she’s boring, but even when she’s downplaying her great marriage, motherhood and life, she’s still really interesting.
Connelly sat down for an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald to promote He’s Just Not That Into You. In the film, Connelly plays a married woman absorbed with her career and her own idea of the perfect life – so wrapped up that she doesn’t notice that her husband (played by Bradley Cooper) is falling for Scarlett Johansson’s character. This is just my opinion, but I’ve always that Connelly is immensely talented, and this film is totally beneath her.
Connelly talks about how much her first son, Kai, changed her life. She also talks about her husband, British actor Paul Bettany a little, but I want more! She and Paul have another son together, a five-year-old named Stellan. Paul and Jennifer will be working with each other again on the Charles Darwin biopic, Creation. Jennifer will be playing Darwin’s wife. Sydney Morning Herald has more:
Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly has made a successful habit of playing generally unhappy or tormented women in movies. From her junkie role in Requiem For A Dream and her Oscar-winning performance as the struggling wife of John Nash (Russell Crowe) in A Beautiful Mind to her subsequent turn as a thrill-seeking journalist in Blood Diamond, she has avoided the lightweight roles that defined her early career.
“I was drawn to playing in something that was a little lighter,” Connelly says. “It’s a feel-good movie, it’s a popcorn movie. I like popcorn movies too. You can sit down with your friends when you don’t really want to watch anything heavy and have some fun with it.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Connelly plays one of the film’s less extravagant characters, the highly strung Janine, a professional who has taken the plunge and married. Her mistake is that she gets so caught up in creating a perfect life that she doesn’t notice her lawyer husband (Bradley Cooper) succumbing to Johansson’s charms.
“Although there are great guys in it too, I was really drawn to the idea of working with a bunch of women,” Connelly says. “A lot of my scenes are with Ginnifer, who plays my closest friend, and that was interesting to me because I haven’t really done that in a film. Usually I’m a wife or mother and often I’m with lots of men.”
Displaying a refreshing candour, Connelly, a self-confessed perfectionist, admits the joys of motherhood and her marriage to the outgoing British actor Paul Bettany, whom she met on A Beautiful Mind, have helped her to relax. However, she says it was the birth of her son, Kai (now 11), from her previous relationship with photographer David Dougan, that set her on the road to success.
“I don’t think I would have been able to do the quality work that followed if it hadn’t been for my son,” she says. “He changed me. He helped me to understand myself and find my place in the world.”
Connelly’s return to acting came after she had studied English at Yale and Stanford. She graduated to more adult fare in Mulholland Falls, Inventing The Abbotts, Dark City and Pollock, though admits “it took a while to change people’s perceptions of me”.
Her career blossomed with her appearances in the Oscar-nominated films House Of Sand And Fog and Little Children. She had a starring turn as a desperate mum in the horror film Dark Water and she was Eric Bana’s ex and co-worker in The Hulk.
“I wish there were more strong, dramatic roles. I love working and I don’t often find things that I feel [I] really love. I often make choices because it’s a decent choice.”
Connelly is a low-key kind of movie star. Based in New York, she and Bettany try to manage their movie commitments around their family, which now includes their five-year-old son, Stellan.
“Paul and I started out trying to work at different times but it’s a bit unrealistic with the timing of projects,” Connelly says. “That said, it’s worked out really well. We do a lot of flying around to different places to make sure the family is together. I think the longest we have ever been apart is two weeks … so it’s a lot of aeroplanes. It’s very bad for the environment, I know, but it’s been really good for our family.”
Currently she is again playing a wife, this time in the Charles Darwin biopic, Creation, which chronicles the naturalist’s early years as he struggles to cope with the loss of a child. Still, she’s not complaining as she finally reunites with Bettany on screen.
“We’d been circling around things, trying to find something to do together for some time,” she says, “and now I feel so lucky to be able to come to work with him every day. It’s really great. Not many people get to be so fortunate.”
From The Sydney Morning Herald
I didn’t know that Jennifer and Paul had their home base in New York – I really thought they lived in London. I’ve seen interview with Paul, and to say that he adores his family is an understatement – that man worships his wife, his son and his step-son. Jennifer Connelly might be one of the luckiest women in the world, but
she will forever underplay it.
Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are shown at the NY premiere of Inkheart on 1/15/09. Credit: WENN
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