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Jennifer Connelly's blue eyes are possibly the brightest in Hollywood. Framed by her long raven locks and offset by her pale complexion and jet-black eyebrows, they have become the 38-year-old actress's trademark.
Certainly her slender frame means she has all the requisites for an alluring, glamorous kind of stardom, and she certainly is ravishing enough to have procured lucrative contracts with Revlon and Balenciaga.
Yet somehow, until now, she has specialised in playing generally unhappy or tormented women in movies. From her breakthrough junkie role in the 2000 movie Requiem for a Dream to her Oscar-winning performance as the struggling wife of John Nash (Russell Crowe) in A Beautiful Mind, and even her subsequent turn as a hard-nosed journalist in Blood Diamond, her tendency has been towards more serious roles.
This stems from the fact that she came to adult stardom late, already savvy, experienced and burned from her less successful teen career. Now, after setting up a dream adult life as a devoted mother of two and wife to British actor Paul Bettany - whom she met on A Beautiful Mind - she is ready to branch out with some light entertainment. She's the human who shows Keanu Reeves' alien our way of living in the remake of the 1951 sci-fi cult classic The Day The Earth Stood Still and she is part of an all-star cast in the chick flick He's Just Not That Into You. Why hasn't she been allowed to be frivolous on screen in the past? "I don't know why but I guess now I am," she responds with a grin. "Maybe it was because I suck at it. We'll see."
The Day The Earth Stood Still, released in New Zealand December 11, might be a full-blown sci-fi blockbuster, but it bears many of the hallmarks of Connelly's earlier work. "The original story had a lot of spectacle and was exciting to watch," she says, "and I liked that it also had content that was provocative and intellectually interesting. I thought that this version had all those elements as well."
As a woman who wants to save the planet, Connelly' astro-biologist is smart and tough. She's also a stepmother to 10-year-old Jaden Smith, who plays the son of her husband, who died in Iraq. "It's a slightly bristly relationship and that's not easy for a kid to play," she explains. "I've worked with a bunch of kids before and there's so much pressure put on them. I find it painful and uncomfortable when you come across kids who really don't want to be there, so it's heartening when you meet someone who is so enthusiastic about it, like Jaden. He of course has his parents [Will and Jada] as a strong support. That whole family is incredible."
Displaying a refreshing candour beneath her polite veneer, Connelly is a low-key kind of movie star. She lives in a Brooklyn brownstone in a family neighbourhood where she blends in with the locals. She and Bettany own a country house in Vermont, and try to manage their movie commitments around their family, which currently comprises 5-year-old Stellan (named after Bettany's actor buddy Stellan Skarsgard) and Connelly's 11-year-old son Kai, from her previous relationship with photographer David Dougan.
"Paul and I started out trying to work at different times, but it's a bit unrealistic with the timing of projects," Connelly admits. "That said, it's worked out really well. We do a lot of flying around to different places to make sure the family is together. I think the longest we have ever been apart is two weeks. We never go past that."
The daughter of a clothing retailer father, and an antiques dealer mother, Connelly's stunning looks are the result of a mixed heritage. Her paternal grandparents were of Irish and Norwegian descent while her maternal grandparents were Russian and Polish Jews. She grew up in Brooklyn Heights and started out in print and television ads and made her film debut at the age of 11.
"I had the chance to work with Sergio Leone in my first movie, Once Upon A Time in America, with incredible actors like Robert De Niro and James Woods, and that's as good as it gets," she recalls, even if she had a tiny part. "At the time I was a kid who hadn't any aspirations to be an actor. I didn't have any movie posters on my wall or anything, I didn't go to voice lessons or dance lessons. It just sort of happened to me, and I kept doing it because I wanted to spend the summer in Italy, or whatever.
My motivation was based on different things than it is now. It was a strange way to grow up." She appeared in the forgettable Some Girls, became a teen icon alongside David Bowie in the fantasy Labyrinth, and gave it all away after filming the big-budget Disney bomb, The Rocketeer, where she met Billy Campbell, 11 years her senior, who became her beau of five years.
After studying English at Yale and Stanford, she returned to acting, graduating to more adult fare in Mulholland Falls, Inventing The Abbots, Dark City (Director's Cut out now in stores) and Pollock. "As I was getting older I wanted to do something different, but it took a while to change people's perceptions of me as I'd been associated with the things I'd done before," Connelly explains.
"I felt like it started again with Waking The Dead, which for me was one of the first movies that is a better reflection of the person and actor I am now." Of course that was around the time she gave birth to Kai. "I don't think I would have been able to do the quality work that followed if it hadn't been for my son. He's changed me. He's helped me to understand myself and find my place in the world." Indeed, Connelly's career blossomed with her appearances in the Oscar-nominated films House of Sand and Fog and Little Children.
"I wish there were more strong dramatic roles," Connelly sighs. "I love working and I don't often find things that I feel really love. I often make choices because it's a decent choice. I wish more often there was this feeling of there being no option not to do it, where I felt that strongly about the film and the people making it."
Where her two upcoming movies fit into that equation she is not saying. Still, she was relieved to do less demanding parts after playing a mourning mum who loses her child in a hit-and-run in Reservation Road (now available on DVD). "It was a beautiful piece of writing and I thought it could be a beautiful film," she explains.
"I was just drawn to it. I didn't anticipate it affecting me so much and it just took me by surprise. My jaw actually locked up and I had a hard time sleeping." In late February we'll see her in He's Just Not That Into You, co-starring Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston and Ginnifer Goodwin - Connelly's most light-hearted movie since her youth. "It's a feel-good, popcorn movie. You can sit down with your friends when you don't want to watch anything heavy. I really loved the idea of working with a bunch of women and a lot of my scenes are with Ginnifer, who plays my closest friend. That was interesting to me because I haven't really done that in a film.
Usually I'm a wife or mother." Not that she's complaining about playing a wife in her current film, as she finally gets to reunite on screen with Bettany in the Charles Darwin biopic, Creation. The story chronicles the naturalist's early years, as he struggles to cope with the loss of a child.
"We'd been circling around things, trying to find something to do together for some time," she says, "and now I feel so lucky to be able to come to work with him every day. It's really great. Not many people get to be so fortunate."
* The Day The Earth Stood Still is out in cinemas December 11.
