Jennifer Connelly

Jennifer Lynn Connelly (born December 12, 1970) is an American film actress and former child model. She made her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America. Although starring as early as a teenager in films such as Labyrinth and Career Opportunities, she gained critical acclaim following her work in the 1998 science fiction film Dark City and the 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream. In 2002, Connelly won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind. Other film appearances include the 2003 Marvel superhero film Hulk, the 2005 thriller drama Dark Water, Blood Diamond, The Day the Earth Stood Still and the romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You.Since 2005, Connelly has served as Amnesty International Ambassador for Human Rights Education for the United States. During her career, various magazines, including Time, Vanity Fair, and Esquire have named her on their lists of the most beautiful women.

Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, the daughter of Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father was Roman Catholic, and of Irish and Norwegian descent; her mother was Jewish, a descendant of emigrants from Russia and Poland, and was schooled in a yeshiva. Connelly was raised in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, and attended St. Ann's private school, except for the four years the family spent living in Woodstock, New York.One of her father's friends was an advertising executive, who suggested that she should audition in order to become a child model. She received the representation from the Ford modeling agency. At the age of ten, Connelly's career started in newspaper and magazine ads, then moved to television commercials. In 1984, she appeared in Duran Duran's concept concert video Arena (An Absurd Notion). From 1986 to 1992, she appeared in several issues of the Seventeen Magazine as well as in Japanese magazine "Roadshow" and on December 1986, recorded the pop single “Monologue of Love” singing in phonetic Japanese. All these appearances led to movie auditions and her first film role was as Deborah Gelly, a supporting role in Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America, filmed mostly in 1982 when she was eleven. She next starred in Italian horror-director Dario Argento's 1985 film Phenomena in the coming-of-age movie Seven Minutes in Heaven. Balancing work and school, she enrolled at Yale University where she studied English and Drama for the two following years, before transferring to Stanford University to train in classical Theater and improvisation with Roy London, Howard Fine, and Harold Guskin. She did not graduate.

Connelly became a star with her next picture, the 1986 fantasy film Labyrinth. She played Sarah, a teenager on the quest to rescue her little brother Toby, from goblin's world, ruled by King Jareth, portrayed by David Bowie. The film disappointed at the box office, but became a cult classic in later years with a large fan base still in existence. She starred as Jennifer Corvino in Phenomena under the direction from Italian giallo master Dario Argento. Connelly starred in several obscure films, such as the 1988 Etoile, which was never released in the United States, one of the less successful in her career, and the Michael Hoffman-directed Some Girls, in which she portrayed the college student Gabby. In the 1990 Dennis Hopper-directed The Hot Spot, she played Gloria Harper, a woman blackmailed by Frank Sutton, portrayed by William Sadler. The movie was a box office failure. Her next movie was the 1991 romantic comedy Career Opportunities, in which she starred along with Frank Whaley. The big-budget Disney film The Rocketeer failed to ignite her career; this resulted in a temporary break in Connelly's acting work. The next year, she appeared alongside Jason Priestley in the Roy Orbison music video for "I Drove All Night". It wasn't until the middle of the 1990s that she started to demonstrate her ability to handle more mature roles. The 1996 independent film Far Harbor played a role very different from the types she had previously portrayed and hinted at a much broader range than she had previously shown. Connelly began to appear in smaller but well-regarded films, such as 1997's drama Inventing the Abbotts, and 2000's Waking the Dead. In the first one, set in the late 1950s, she personified Eleanor, one of the three daughters of the town millionaire Lloyd Abbot, while in the second, based on the 1986 novel of the same name, her character was Sarah. She played a collegiate lesbian in John Singleton's 1995 ensemble drama, Higher Learning. The critically favored 1998 science fiction film Dark City, in which she played a supporting role and afforded her the chance to work with such actors as Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Ian Richardson, and Kiefer Sutherland. Connelly revisited her ingenue image, although in a more understated way, for the 2000 biopic Pollock, in which she played Jackson Pollock's mistress. The same year she portrayed the role of Catherine Miller, Connelly's first Television appearance, in the FOX drama series The $treet about a brokerage house in New York City.

In 2008 she appeared alongside Keanu Reeves in the 2008 remake of the 1951 science fiction film The Day The Earth Stood Still. Connelly, a fan of the original movie, played the Princeton University astrobiologist Dr. Helen Benson. Unlike the original movie, where her character was a secretary and the focus of the movie was balanced in her romantic relationship with Klaatu, the remake emphasizes on the troubled relationship between her and her stepson portrayed by Jaden Smith. The astronomer Seth Shostak prepared her in order to understand the scientific jargon of the character. She also co-starred in a role opposite Jennifer Aniston and Ginnifer Goodwin in the 2008 romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You, based on self-help book of the same name, where she played Janine. Her next work was a small role in the fantasy film Inkheart. Her 2009 roles included the costume drama biopic Creation, in which she personified Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin, played by her real-life husband, Paul Bettany. The movie took place during the writing of On the Origin of Species by Dr. Darwin and the struggle along with his religious wife, Emma, who opposed the theories while they were in deep grief for the passing of their daughter Annie. The same year she voiced 7, in the animation film 9.