Connelly clearly assumes the world’s more interested in Crowe than in her, and she may be right. For now. Despite the heavy, low-lying fog that still covers much of the Oscar race, “A Beautiful Mind” is plainly marching toward a best-picture nomination, and Connelly’s performance–moving, open-faced, utterly lacking in artifice, and an essential complement to Crowe’s showy turn–has already earned her a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress, as well as an award from the American Film Institute. Connelly’s acting, as well as her retro,’40s-ish looks, has always had its enthusiasts. Esquire recently cited her eyebrows as one of “162 Reasons It’s Good to Be an American Man.” But “Beautiful Mind” jump-started her reputation from the moment she was cast. “There was a little surprise that she’d gotten the part,” says director Ron Howard. “There was a lot of, ‘Yeah, she’s beautiful and she’s always been solid, and, yeah, she was really interesting in ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ but, wow, you went with Jennifer Connelly?’ "
In person, Connelly seems warm, contemplative and ordinary in the best sense of the word, a Manhattan single mom who’s exponentially less comfortable talking about awards buzz (“It’s just speculating on conjecture, you know what I mean?”) than she is discussing her 4-year-old son, Kai, and his intense need for a German shepherd (“I already have grief over the dwarf hamster his father bought him. I hear him chewing on the cage to get out. Actually it’s a she–her name’s Herbert”). Connelly grew up in Brooklyn Heights and, briefly, Woodstock, N.Y. She was modeling and doing commercials by 10. “I don’t really know why, because I was shy,” she says. “But I did department-store catalogs, and Danskin tights, you know? The kid on the package modeling the leotard and pretending I’m a ballerina?” At 11, Connelly was cast in “Once Upon a Time in America,” and embarked on an acting career that, for many years, was like a moving sidewalk: she had no idea how she’d gotten on and no idea if she should get off. “I was an overly polite teenager, and it didn’t serve me particularly well. I wanted to be good and be nice and be a peacemaker. I think it made me precocious on one level and stunted on another. I had my moments of frustration where I felt uncomfortable being looked at. I thought, ‘I’m just not cut out for this. I don’t want to be watched. I just want to disappear’.”
Connelly gave both Yale and Stanford a try but never graduated. She drifted through cheesy movies, all of which are passionately defended on the Web by guys who had their eyes on something other than the plot: “Labyrinth,” “The Rocketeer,” the cutesy, John Hughesy “Career Opportunities” and the hormonal noir “The Hot Spot,” among them. It wasn’t until Connelly’s son was born in 1997–Kai’s father is photographer David Dugan, and the actress currently dates Josh Charles of “Sports Night”–that she did the whole laying-claim-to-your-life thing. In 2000, she made “Requiem for a Dream,” a movie, based on Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel, about junkies in Brooklyn and, more generally, about the fact that the heart is like a coal engine that’s constantly demanding to be fed. “Requiem” is far too upsetting to actually watch, but Connelly’s devastating, self-destructive turn made it clear that the actress was done screwing around with fluff. “It was a courageous performance,” says “Beautiful Mind’s” Howard, who saw “Requiem” shortly before casting her. “And I also thought it powerfully demonstrated the ability of a character to shift before your very eyes. In that case, it was a deterioration. In the case of Alicia Nash, it’s kind of a blossoming.”
Connelly’s part in “Beautiful Mind” grew during production, and Howard says he began to see John Nash’s story not as that of a man who survived but a man who was saved. In a way, the movie’s a rescue story like “Apollo 13,” which Howard and his partner, Brian Grazer, made years ago. John Nash is like the capsule perilously adrift, and Alicia is like mission control, though, come to think of it, her task is even harder than mission control’s because her husband is in denial: he keeps radioing Houston and insisting he doesn’t have a problem. Some critics have, rightfully, taken issue with “Beautiful Mind’s” oversimplifications, but Connelly’s performance is subtle and real. It’s only because you believe in Alicia that you believe in safe landings.
J.G.
Directing Magic
Actually, a lot of people picked up on the fierce commitment behind this quietly savage depiction of a Maine couple poisoned with grief after the murder of their son. Almost unanimously acclaimed, the low-budgeted “In the Bedroom” has a good shot at a best-picture Oscar nomination, and nominations for its two stars, Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, are almost a sure thing.
With his scraggly beard and pale, unlined, easily flushed skin, Field does not at first glance look like either an obsessive artist or an actor (or someone who’s the father of three). He seems a good 10 years younger than his 37 years. Some may remember him as Ashley Judd’s sensitive boyfriend in Victor Nunez’s “Ruby in Paradise” or as the piano player Nick Nightingale in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” (on the side, Field is a jazz musician himself). He was a regular for a few years on the series “Once and Again” and has popped up in such Hollywood megatrash as “The Haunting” and “Twister.” The latter allowed him to pay off his student loans at the American Film Institute (where he made an award-winning short, “Nonnie & Alex”), but chasing after computer-generated tornadoes didn’t advance his acting chops much. “I wrapped that movie at 6 a.m. and flew to New York to do another one, and I felt like I had two left feet: I couldn’t say a line without screaming.”
Field, who grew up in rural Oregon, has lived on and off in Maine since 1995. He used his knowledge of his neighbors to flesh out the characters in Andre Dubus’s short story “Killings,” which “In the Bedroom” is based on. In the 18-page story–which is primarily about the “revenge” that constitutes the movie’s third act–the father sells women’s clothing. In the movie he’s a doctor. “The father and son are based loosely on a father and son I knew in Maine.” He’s expanded and deepened the story by exploring issues of class. Field’s attention to detail and psychological nuance is evident in watching the film; when he talks about the characters in “In the Bedroom” he knows every inch of their lives, down to the school Spacek’s character went to (Dalton or Ethical Culture in New York) and how the decorations in her home reflect that fact that she’s “from away,” as Maine folks refer to nonlocals.
Dubus had been a hero of Field’s for years. “He was authentic; he knew who he was.” Sadly, he died before the movie was finished, as did Field’s other hero/mentor, Stanley Kubrick, whom he observed closely during the long “Eyes Wide Shut” shoot. Kubrick liked to work with only a tiny crew, in an intimate, organic relationship with his actors, and Field has followed his model. “You want to keep actors out of their heads. You want them to get lost,” Field explains. “Kubrick and Nunez worked very similarly–they are both looking for something to spark, to happen. What drives them both is that they want to be surprised.”
Though Field has found a style of his own–hushed, intimate, classical–“In the Bedroom” has both a formal rigor and a behavioral spontaneity that Kubrick would surely admire. It’s hard to believe this stylish, polished film was made for considerably less than $2 million. The perfectionist director was determined “that it’s going to look exactly how I want it to look. If I had $20 million it would look exactly the same.” Field may be eager to return to acting, but with one film he’s guaranteed his future as a director. He has the magnificent obsessiveness of the natural-born filmmaker. D.A.
