Jennifer Connelly playing Jenny Blake in the 1991 film The Rocketeer

Jennifer Lynn Connelly (born December 12, 1970 in the Catskill Mountains, New York) is an American film actress. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager, she has only recently received critical acclaim for her work, most notably for Requiem for a Dream (2000) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), for which she won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress.

Connelly is married to the British actor Paul Bettany, whom she met while working on a film; the couple's son, Stellan, was born August 5, 2003. She has also a five-year-old son, Kai, from a previous relationship.

Connelly grew up in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge, attending St. Ann's School, except for four years the family spent living in Woodstock, New York. Her father was in the garment industry, and one of his close friends through the trade was an advertising executive.

The executive friend suggested Jennifer audition at a modelling agency. At the age of 10, her career started in newspaper and magazine ads, then moved to television commercials.

Her first film role was in the 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, where she danced for the role of "young Deborah Gelly" in Sergio Leone's gangster epic. She followed that with a major role in Jim Henson's film Labyrinth (1986).

Around this time, Connelly had a strange career move, releasing Monologue of Love , a "charming" Japanese single with a semi-classical instrumental arrangement. The B-side of the tape is Message of Love, an interview with music in the background.

She began studying English at Yale, but transferred two years later to Stanford.

She returned to films in the 1990s, in such titles as The Rocketeer (1991), Dark City (1998), and House of Sand and Fog (2003).

Selected Filmography

• Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
• Labyrinth (1986)
• The Rocketeer (1991)
• Higher Learning (1995)
• Mulholland Falls (1996)
• Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
• Dark City (1998)
• Waking the Dead (2000)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)
• Pollock (2000)
• A Beautiful Mind (2001)
• Hulk (2003)
• House of Sand and Fog (2003)
• Dark Water (2004)

External links