62 Facts About Jennifer Connelly

1.

Jennifer Connelly began her career as a child model before making her acting debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America.

2.

Jennifer Connelly received praise for her performance in the science fiction film Dark City and playing a drug addict in Darren Aronofsky's drama film Requiem for a Dream.

3.

In 2002, Connelly won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Alicia Nash in Ron Howard's biopic A Beautiful Mind.

4.

Jennifer Connelly was named Amnesty International Ambassador for Human Rights Education in 2005.

5.

Jennifer Connelly has been the face of Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton fashion advertisements, as well as for Revlon cosmetics.

6.

Jennifer Lynn Connelly was born on December 12,1970, in Cairo, New York, in the Catskill Mountains, the only child of Ilene, an antique dealer, and Gerard Karl Connelly, a clothing manufacturer.

7.

Jennifer Connelly's father was a Catholic of Irish and Norwegian descent.

8.

Jennifer Connelly's mother was Jewish and was educated at a yeshiva; all of Connelly's maternal great-grandparents were Ashkenazi Jewish emigrants from Poland and Russia.

9.

Jennifer Connelly was raised primarily in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, where she attended Saint Ann's, a private school specializing in the arts.

10.

Jennifer Connelly's father suffered from asthma so the family moved to Woodstock, New York, in 1976, to escape the city smog.

11.

Four years later, the family returned to Brooklyn Heights, and Jennifer Connelly returned to Saint Ann's School.

12.

When Jennifer Connelly was ten years old, an advertising executive friend of her father suggested she audition as a model.

13.

Jennifer Connelly's parents sent a picture of her to the Ford Modeling Agency, which shortly after added her to its roster.

14.

Jennifer Connelly began modeling for print advertisements before moving on to television commercials.

15.

Jennifer Connelly appeared on the covers of several issues of the American teenage magazine Seventeen in 1986 and 1988.

16.

Jennifer Connelly sang in phonetic Japanese as she did not speak the language.

17.

When her mother began taking her to acting auditions, a then 11-year-old Jennifer Connelly was quickly selected for a supporting role as the aspiring dancer and actress Deborah Gelly in Sergio Leone's Jewish gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America.

18.

Jennifer Connelly described the movie as "an incredibly idyllic introduction to movie-making".

19.

Jennifer Connelly's first leading role was in Italian giallo-director Dario Argento's 1985 film Phenomena.

20.

Jennifer Connelly next had the lead in the coming-of-age movie Seven Minutes in Heaven, released the same year.

21.

Jennifer Connelly gained public recognition with Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy Labyrinth with David Bowie, in which she played Sarah Williams, a teenager on a quest to rescue her brother Toby from the world of goblins.

22.

Jennifer Connelly looks right, but she lacks conviction and seems to be reading rehearsed lines that are recited without belief in her goal or real need to accomplish it.

23.

In 1990, Dennis Hopper directed The Hot Spot, in which Jennifer Connelly played Gloria Harper, a woman being blackmailed.

24.

Jennifer Connelly played Jenny Blake, a Disney dilution of what was in the original work a Betty Page persona, here the aspiring actress girlfriend of stunt pilot Cliff, "the Rocketeer".

25.

New York characterized the movie as "pallid" but said of her performance, "Jennifer Connelly is properly cast; she has the moist, full-to-the-cheek bones sensuality of the Hollywood starlets of that period, but she's a little straight".

26.

Jennifer Connelly appeared alongside Jason Priestley in the Roy Orbison music video for "I Drove All Night" the following year, directed by Peter Care.

27.

Jennifer Connelly next appeared in Of Love and Shadows, a 1994 Argentine-American drama film written and directed by Betty Kaplan starring Antonio Banderas.

28.

Jennifer Connelly then appeared in the 1996 independent film Far Harbor as Elie, a prominent person in a Hollywood studio who writes a screenplay based on her traumas.

29.

In 1996, Jennifer Connelly followed up with the neo-noir crime thriller Mulholland Falls, which featured the murder of Allison Pond, mistress of General Timms, and the investigation by a group of detectives led by Maxwell Hoover.

30.

Jennifer Connelly began to appear in small-budget films which garnered praise from critics, such as 1997's drama Inventing the Abbotts, set in the late 1950s, in which she played the part of Eleanor, one of three daughters of the town millionaire, Lloyd Abbott.

31.

The critic from Entertainment Weekly thought Jennifer Connelly gave a strong performance; writing she "raises the stakes any time she's on screen".

32.

Jennifer Connelly portrayed femme fatale Emma, a torch singer whose husband, John Murdoch, suffers from amnesia.

33.

Jennifer Connelly appeared in Darren Aronofsky Requiem for a Dream, based on the novel of the same name by Hubert Selby Jr.

34.

Jennifer Connelly was drawn to the script for its depiction of addiction and its effects on relatives; she played Marion Silver, the girlfriend of Harry.

35.

Jennifer Connelly prepared for the role by renting an apartment in the building where the character lived; Jennifer Connelly isolated herself, painted, listened to music that she considered that her character would, designed clothes, and used the time to reflect about addictions and their origin.

36.

Jennifer Connelly talked to addicts and attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings with a friend who was in recovery.

37.

Jennifer Connelly, too, whittled herself down to a new weight class, and it's her performance that gives the movie weight, since her fall is the most precipitous.

38.

Jennifer Connelly has never before done anything to prepare us for how good she is here.

39.

Also in 2000, Jennifer Connelly appeared in Waking the Dead, based on the 1986 novel of the same name, playing Sarah Williams, an activist killed by a car bomb in Minneapolis while she was driving Chilean refugees.

40.

Jennifer Connelly captures a burning ethereality and willfulness that are very much of the period.

41.

Jennifer Connelly was invited to an audition after Shapiro sent the producers a tape with a clip of the then-unreleased Requiem for a Dream.

42.

Jennifer Connelly was cast by producer Brian Grazer, as Alicia Nash, the caring and enduring wife of schizophrenic man John Nash, played by Russell Crowe.

43.

Jennifer Connelly met the real Alicia Nash before filming commenced to learn about her life.

44.

Jennifer Connelly starred in Ang Lee's Hulk, because she was interested in his philosophical perspective on the Marvel Comics superhero.

45.

Jennifer Connelly played Betty Ross, a scientist and the former girlfriend of the main character, Bruce Banner.

46.

Jennifer Connelly portrayed Kathy Nicolo, an abandoned wife whose inherited house is sold at auction to the Iranian emigre and former colonel Massoud Amir Behrani.

47.

Jennifer Connelly played Dahlia, a frightened young woman traumatized by her past, who moves with her daughter to an apartment in New York City where paranormal happenings take place.

48.

Jennifer Connelly played Kathy Adamson in an adaptation of the novel Little Children alongside Kate Winslet, a film which focuses on the relationship between Sarah Pierce and Brad Adamson.

49.

Jennifer Connelly co-starred in Blood Diamond opposite Leonardo DiCaprio where she portrayed journalist Maddy Bowen, who is working on exposing the real story behind blood diamonds.

50.

Jennifer Connelly portrayed astrobiologist Helen Benson alongside Keanu Reeves in the 2008 remake of the 1951 science fiction film The Day The Earth Stood Still.

51.

Jennifer Connelly then voiced the character named "7", an adventurous warrior in the animated film 9.

52.

Jennifer Connelly portrayed the title role of Virginia, a mentally unstable woman who has a 20-year affair with the local sheriff, whose daughter then starts a relationship with Virginia's son.

53.

Jennifer Connelly prepared for the role by watching documentaries on schizophrenia; she spent time at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the New York University Cancer Center to understand the affections and obstacles of her character.

54.

In 2011, Jennifer Connelly starred in Ron Howard's comedy The Dilemma with Vince Vaughn.

55.

Jennifer Connelly played the ex-wife of Kinnear's character, with whom he is obsessed.

56.

Jennifer Connelly had a role in the 2014 film adaptation of the 1983 Mark Helprin novel, Winter's Tale, the directorial debut of Akiva Goldsman, alongside Colin Farrell, William Hurt and Russell Crowe; as well as starring in the English-speaking directorial debut of Claudia Llosa, Aloft.

57.

Jennifer Connelly has starred in the television series Snowpiercer since 2020, her first role in television since the cancellation of The Street in 2000.

58.

Jennifer Connelly then had a relationship with photographer David Dugan, with whom she has a son, born in 1997.

59.

On November 14,2005, Jennifer Connelly was named Amnesty International Ambassador for Human Rights Education.

60.

Jennifer Connelly appeared in an advertisement highlighting the global need for clean water, and sought donations for African, Indian, and Central American drilling projects for the non-profit organization Charity: Water.

61.

In May 2012, Jennifer Connelly was named ambassador for Save the Children fund, to advocate for children's rights in the United States and worldwide.

62.

In February 2012, Jennifer Connelly was announced as the first global brand ambassador for Shiseido, having previously worked with the company in the 1980s in a series of advertisements for the Japanese market.