In the above Vanity Fair interview, actress Jennifer Connelly talks about some of her career highlights, beginning with her first big opportunity when she was cast in 1984’s Once Upon a Time in America, directed by Sergio Leone.
While it was only a minor role, the then 11- or 12-year-old Connelly filmed some of her scenes in New York and went to Rome for scenes shot in a studio.
“It was really magical for me being on that set. So it really made me fall in love with, you know, making films,” she says of her experience in the epic crime drama, which was Leone’s last film.
Press the top left play button on the above feature image to watch her in the Vanity Fair interview.
Her breakthrough role came a few years later with the fantasy film Labyrinth, directed by Jim Henson, where she starred alongside David Bowie.
Released in 1986, the film went on to become a cult classic.
“It was like a wonderland. We filmed in London, and we have these massive builds that were so detailed and so magnificent,” she says in the above video.
“And we had lost of rehearsals with the puppeteers and that was just so extraordinary, I just had never been exposed to that world before. It was literally like being on 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,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone like him who is so kind and gentle with me and patient.”
Given the now 53-year-old has been in dozens of movies, only some are covered in the above video, with the other ones she also gets to discuss are Requiem for a Dream (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), House of Sand and Fog (2003), Shelter (2014), Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Dark Matter (2024).
Unfortunately, she doesn’t get to talk about some of her other films, such as The Rocketeer (1991), Dark City (1998), The Hulk (2003), Blood Diamond (2006), and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008).
