JENNIFER CONNELLY
Maze runner…
Born and raised in New York State, Jennifer Lynn Connelly has spent most of her life in front of the camera. At the age of 10 she landed a modelling contract; two years later she made the jump to the silver screen, appearing in Sergio Leone’s gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America (1984). Fellow Italian filmmaker Dario Argento then gave Connelly her first lead role in his 1985 fairytale fright-flick Phenomena.
Connelly says her adolescent years left her feeling “like a kind of walking puppet”, making it oddly fitting that she entered the mainstream with Muppets creator Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy Labyrinth. However, teen flicks Some Girls (1988) and Career Opportunities (1991) and comic-book flop The Rocketeer (1991) failed to launch Connelly’s career into the stratosphere - although a TV ad in Japan saw her hit the top of the local pop charts.
Unhappy with the exploitative nature of many of her early films, Connelly became more selective. The result was a run of attention-grabbing turns in the second half of the ’90s in films ranging from college drama Higher Learning (1995) and neo-noir thriller Mulholland Falls (1996) to sci-fi mind-bender Dark City (1998).
The year 2000 was a major turning point for Connelly, with the release of two films that garnered widespread critical kudos: Waking The Dead and Requiem For A Dream. The latter also brought her to the attention of director Ron Howard, who cast her in A Beautiful Mind (alongside her future husband Paul Bettany). Connelly’s performance in that film was rewarded with the 2002 Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Despite occasional hiatuses (“I got to spend a whole year with my kids and my husband”) Connelly has been a cinema fixture for the past two decades, alternating intimate dramas like Little Children (2004) and Shelter (2014) with big-budget blockbusters such as Hulk (2003), Alita: Battle Angel and the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick. She even followed her husband into the MCU – albeit in voice only – as ‘Karen’ the Spidey-suit’s A.I. Anton van Beek