Jennifer Connelly Breaks Down Her Career, from 'Top Gun' to 'Labyrinth' | Vanity Fair

It's just a connection that I have with that character's experience. Like, if you watch a movie that's really effective and really moves you, and you find yourself in a movie theater crying, it's like, not necessarily that you're intellectually thinking, oh, this reminds me of what I experienced with my dad or with my sister or whatever, but it reaches you on some, like, human level. Hi, I'm Jennifer Connelly, and this is the timeline of my career. My beloved is white and ruddy. His skin is as the most fine gold. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, even though he hasn't washed since last December. I was 10, and we lived in Brooklyn Heights, and I remember pretty much every day, we'd go on the subway and go into the city, and I'd do, like, a couple jobs, and then I started doing commercials. It wasn't something that I chose for myself. I think I was really shy, and I enjoyed it in that I liked meeting people, and I always wanted to be very professional, do as good a job as I could. Like, Firestarter, I remember, was one of the movies that I auditioned for and didn't get. And then I had this audition for Once Upon a Time in America, and I had zero training and, like, no skill at that point whatsoever. I think I was really helped by the fact that I looked enough like Elizabeth McGovern, so I was playing the character that she was playing as a young girl. I remember, actually, I was supposed to play a dancer, and they asked me to, like, improvise a ballet dance, and I can only imagine what that must have looked like because I have never taken ballet, so that must have been pretty silly, but I got it somehow. When I was that age, it was really remarkable being on the set of Once Upon a Time in America. I think it's such a beautiful film, and he was such an extraordinary director, Sergio Leone. I was so mesmerized by him. I thought he was such a genius, and he was so gentle, and I honestly didn't have much of a sense of what I was getting into at the time. We filmed some of it in New York, but then they had recreated sort of New York City streets on a back lot in Rome, and I just loved being there, and the sets were so magical, and I was completely awestruck by the talent, the sets, the cinematography, all of the actors. It was really magical for me being on that set, so it kind of made me fall in love with, you know, making films. You're him, aren't you? You're the Goblin King. I want my brother back, please, if it's all the same. What's said is said. But I didn't mean it. Oh, you didn't. It was like a wonderland. We filmed in London, and we had these massive builds that were so detailed and so magnificent, and we had lots of rehearsals with the puppeteers, and that was just so extraordinary. Like, I had never been exposed to that world before. It was literally like a playground for me, being on set and getting to run around and interact with the puppets, and Jim was like an explosion of creativity. I've never met anyone like him. He was so kind and gentle with me and patient. You would have multiple puppeteers working on one puppet at a time. Like, we had the character that I, that my character spent the most time with is this character named Hoggle. I'm Hoggle. So there was a person inside the suit. She had a head on, and she couldn't see out through the eyes, because they were like glass eyes. And then there were like four different puppeteers working together just to do facial expressions. It was pretty wild. You remind me of the babe. What babe? Babe with the power. What power? Power of voodoo. Voodoo? Voodoo. Voodoo what? Remind me of the babe. I was a fan of his music. I'm not sure I was cool enough to really understand the extent of his genius and who he was. Which is probably a good thing, because I probably would have been really intimidated working with him. But I became a super fan. I love the way he interacted with the crew and the kind of juxtaposition of those characters that he created and the way he presented himself on set. Which was, he'd sit on the camera dolly and joke with the crew and was so convivial and easy going. And he seemed to have put a lot of effort into making people comfortable. And I really appreciated that in him. I love you, Harry. You make me feel like a person. Like a me. I really wanted to do that film. I mean, there was so much to do in it. You know, it was explosive. I thought the script was really wild and creative. And I thought Darren was really interesting. I hadn't had an opportunity to play a character like that before. Her life was so far away from my own and it felt like an opportunity to really use my imagination and try and build something, build a character. And I spent a lot of time with people who were very generous with me. Who really shared their experiences with me. And I just really wanted to throw myself at it with kind of everything that I had to try and depict it as truthfully as I could. Well, you have to do something, Harry. I mean, it's your fault that we don't have something for the morning. What are you talking about? You were all hot in the biscuit to get off last night. That is such bullshit. You didn't have to, okay? And we could have had something right now. What was I supposed to do? I'm gonna sit around and watch you push off and knock on myself? Just don't put it all on me, okay? There were so many creative people who were making really bold choices. That whole atmosphere was one of sort of risk-taking and it was quite pioneering. It felt like what they were doing with the music, what they were doing with the sets, what Maddie was doing with the camera. That was the atmosphere. That was the milieu of everyone kind of taking a risk and putting themselves out there and really committing fully to that project. Where the hell do you think I've been, huh? Where's the score? Well, we had a little bit of a problem, see? I mean, everything was going good and then some dumb-ass junkie- Did what? Some dumb-ass junkie did what? You mean you fucked it up? I don't enjoy working from a negative place personally or to create tension or drama in my own life or actually to use direct substitution. It was a tricky time. Jared and I have talked about it since. It was funny. I don't know what it was, but there was a scene where we had a fight. He was supposed to go and score and he hasn't and I'm kind of furious and I'm really withdrawing and I've kind of torn up the apartment a little bit. And I remember when we shot that, we actually had an argument. I can't remember how it played out or how it happened. But he's great and he did a great, you know, he was great in the movie and we've since made up. It's extremely hot in here with the windows closed and extremely noisy with them open. So I was wondering if there's any way you could, I don't know, maybe work someplace else for about 45 minutes? Not a problem. Thank you so much. Let it break. When I read it and auditioned for the part, I thought, oh God, just if only I could get a part like this. Like, I'll never ask for a good one again. Like, this one's so great. It was really clear to me that it was a special part and a special project. You know, Ron and Russell and screenplay and story. I was really excited to be part of it. It doesn't happen all the time. You know, there are few and far between, I think, projects that you find that have all of those elements going for them. Charles is watching. He was okay. There's no one here. There was a scene in the movie where he's almost drowned our baby and the stakes are quite high. And we shot the beginning of the scene in one location. I come down the stairs and we resume it and it was in an entirely different location. So filmed nowhere near the time when we filmed the first half of the scene. We had established a kind of emotional state that I kind of had to pick up as I came down. And it was really strange. It was a strange challenge because I feel like with scenes that have a very, have like emotionally high stakes, I try not to like set particular expectations of what they're gonna look like. Like, oh, I need to be crying in this scene because she's really upset. You know, I sort of think about where that character is without that kind of external expectations. But in this instance, there was an external expectation placed on it because it was a direct cut. It was an interesting challenge with no ramp up to like have to start a scene at sort of like at a certain pitch right in the middle. I remember that feeling tricky. My father left us this house. He left it to me and my brother. You should be telling these things to the bureaucrats at the county tax office. They have made a mistake, not I. Well, they said they would give you your money back. And I know you've put that deck on. I'm sure they'd repay you for that. I'm sorry, miss, but I have nothing more to say to anyone. Why should they be penalized for their incompetence? Tell me that. You should sue them for enough money to buy 10 homes. One of the things that I find most interesting about being an actor is spending time with characters who do make choices that feel so different and that I don't understand. I love that process of, you know, having to make sense of it, of having to imagine that motivation, how that person grew up, what that person experienced to, for that, for whatever choice they make to make sense to them, you know, or to be inevitable for them. She made so many bad choices. I can't really, I can't really pick one to be honest with you. You know, that's kind of the joy and beauty of it is trying to get underneath that and find the key to what makes that, that behavior make perfect sense from that character's point of view. Au revoir. Et bienvenue en Amérique. What just happened? I just really liked your music and didn't know how to express it. I love the story. I thought it was really moving. I thought he did a great job writing the script. We're very aligned creatively. I felt obviously incredibly comfortable and safe with him. I felt like I could come up with ideas and propose things without risk of thinking like, oh, okay, he's going to think this is really stupid or crazy, you know? So that was really fun, feeling completely uninhibited. Like there was one scene, we didn't shoot it that way. I was like, it just doesn't make sense that these two people have just had sex and she's sitting and talking to him that she's put her clothes back on. So why don't I just sit in the chair naked and we have the conversation? And he's like, okay, let's try it. And I don't think I would have done that with anyone else. We did it. And then he looked at it and he's like, it is so ******* distracting that you're sitting in that chair naked talking. We can't do this. You need to put something on. I was like, okay. So that was definitely different. Feeling like I can try this and if it doesn't work, you know, we're going to do it or not do it for the right reasons. Penny. Too late. You were about to ask me what time I get off. Don't give me that look. I'm not giving you any look. I swear. Tom Cruise as a filmmaker is extraordinary. He's always working. He's always thinking about the project. He's always thinking about how it can be better, how we can adjust the script. Is the scene right? Is the writing right? It's a very focused process. I really enjoyed it. We'd have meetings about the script and talk through it and read through it and make adjustments. And then sometimes we would shoot the scene and then reshoot a scene. It felt really important to make the most of the limited screen time that we had. So my character, Penny, is a sailor. Originally, we shot a sailing scene in San Diego. It was beautiful. The beautiful boat. We saw dolphins. It was great. We did the scene. We're sitting out there and Tom goes, no, this is boring. I was like, oh. And he was like, it's not fast enough. It's not cool enough. It's not fast enough. I want Penny to be really strong. And he was right. We went to San Francisco where it's super windy and it was an entirely different experience for getting soaked in the wind. It's so much better. And like I was saying, we don't have that much time with those characters to establish who they are. So a gesture like that, like, okay, she's sailing a boat and it's calm and lovely versus she's sailing this boat and it's this really like high octane adrenaline experience. I think it was a great choice. I will admit to a certain curiosity about the path not taken. Tonight, each of you made a choice that determined which version of my show you experienced. You should still have the cards that you didn't choose. They're also tickets and you can use them to return at any point during the next month and take a different path. Maybe find out if the grass really is greener. It was really fun. I thought about what her core characteristics were. I thought in every iteration, she was someone who was really warm, optimistic, who sort of reached towards happiness. Then I thought about, you know, how she physically presented herself in this world and how she might present herself differently in other worlds where she had lived a different life and had made different choices. The second version of Daniela that we meet, she's single. She never was married. She didn't have kids. She never suffered the intense loss that Daniela won, suffered. So that was really fun to think about how that would mark a person. I still have so much stuff to figure out and I feel like I still have so much to learn in my work, but that's kind of the fun. Like, I don't know, would I go back and tell myself, like, oh, avoid this and try and do this sooner? And part of the joy later is the having to, having to figure it out, you know, the process of figuring it out along the way.