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The Evolution of Jennifer Connelly
Jamie Portman
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - It seems perfectly natural to Jennifer Connelly that she should ration her acting jobs these days; after all, she has two sons to raise.
For her and husband Paul Bettany, that's what marriage and parenthood are all about - a readiness to compromise, accept new responsibilities and establish new priorities. So she has no regrets that she hasn't been in front of a camera in almost a year.
"I had a busy year last year and then I sort of finished everything I had to do at around Christmas time, and I have taken time off since then," says Connelly. "Actually, Paul (Bettany) and I both did. And that was a conscious decision. We had both been busy and we just wanted to have time with the kids: taking them to school, bringing them home from school, playing with them - having a normal summer. It was nice."
Connelly - who supplies the voice of a female warrior fighting for her freedom in the new animated adventure, 9, and who stars opposite her husband in Creation - is in every way the contented wife and mum when she talks to reporters this morning. Take her memories of a recent summer visit to the San Diego's Comic-Con convention, where both 9 and Bettany's new horror thriller, Legion, were being unveiled.
"I think Comic-Con is really fun. I always wish there was more time just hanging out on the floor and chatting with people - the fans who have come to the convention."
However, media obligations prevailed. "Those press conferences are unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it - huge, just huge!"
But they still managed to make a family outing out of it, and their kids had a ball, especially after the convention started distributing little flash cards of both Connelly and Bettany. " 'This is so cool!' " the kids would boast. " 'This is my mom and dad!' "
Connelly knows she's in a good marriage. And in a way, she's become even more aware of this since working with Bettany on Creation, a film that looks at the life of Charles Darwin and the genesis of The Origin Of Species.
The movie, which is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, stars Bettany and Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin, and focuses not only on the seismic impact on society of a history-changing book, but the painful conflicts it caused in the couple's marriage.
For Connelly, it was an eye-opener when she started researching Emma Darwin's story.
"I didn't know anything about her," she confesses. "Maybe that's a huge gap in my education, but I really didn't know anything about his family life and his relationship to her - and her devout Christianity and the conflict that arose because of that.
"So, to me, it was very interesting. I couldn't believe it when I read about it - that this was real, that this was actually their struggle."
She hasn't seen a final cut of Creation. "But what I saw I thought really good. I think Paul's amazing in it."
Playing the troubled Emma Darwin was one opportunity she couldn't turn down. Venturing into the world of animation with 9 was another. In filmmaker Shane Acker's dark fantasy, machines have turned against humanity, reducing it to a few lingering remnants of existence. Connelly plays a courageous and resourceful warrior, known in the movie as 7, who becomes an ally to number 9, the leader of the resistance voiced by Elijah Wood.
For the 38-year-old Oscar winner - she won Best-Supporting Actress for A Beautiful Mind opposite Russell Crowe, which also co-starred her husband - it was a debut experience with animation, and she didn't know what to expect the day she first stepped into the recording booth. She was surprised to find how "disconnected" everything is.
"There's no rehearsal period to start with, where everyone gets together and you do a read-through," she remembers. "We didn't have anything like that."
All she had was the script and a copy of director Shane Acker's original 11-minute version of 9, which had received an Academy Award nomination and convinced producer Tim Burton it needed to be expanded into a full-length feature. There had also been a few preliminary conversations with Acker.
"And then I showed up to do a recording session, and that felt very different to me - to feel so obviously committed to something and involved at one level, while I also felt comparatively disconnected in terms of a process, compared to how I'm used to working on live-action films."
She also had to adjust to the practice, common in animation, of recording her lines on her own, without the benefit of interplay with other actors. There was one day when she did share a session with Wood - "but we didn't have that much to do together. He was very sweet, . . . charming and lovely, and kind and smart. It was a nice experience, but we spent more time with me, sitting on a stool watching him work, and Elijah sitting on a stool watching me work."
Connelly hopes she has projected the image of a complex young woman. "We let her be a little wild, and sometimes she's a little hot-headed . . . but also, she has a really good heart."
Bettany recently started work on a new film, Priest. "He's shooting out here, so we've all been out here for the last couple of weeks, hanging out with him." Connelly starts a new film at the end of September, which is leaving her a little guilty, because the timing is not ideal. "After all that time off, we're now going back to work sort of at the same time." A situation where both are filming is something they try to avoid. But "we'll make it work."
On the other hand, her new film is one she really wants to do, even though she can't discuss it.
"I'm not supposed to be talking about it," she says with a laugh. "But I'll tell you this: It's an independent movie, we're shooting back east, and it will be a very different kind of part for me."
