I'm going to post many more throughout the thread, but for now, I'll start with perhaps my all time favorite actress:
Jennifer Connelly
Everyone here around my age had to have loved this lady since they were a little kid, because if you're my age... you had to love
Labyrinth growing up. If you didn't... then your childhood is missing a huge gap. Other than maybe
The Goonies and
The Gremlins, I'd say this film was the most loved and watch throughout most people's childhoods around my age, and the one that's entertainment value lasted over time. It just has to be. And Jennifer Connelly was a HUGE reason why the film was so great. At such a young age, and one of her first roles ever... she was truly fantastic as the lead character of
Labyrinth, Sarah. She could come off as whiny and annoying at times, but every teenage girl is like that and even so... she still made you feel sorry for her throughout the film, which is incredible because Sarah basically deserved what she got. But you just couldn't help to feel sympathy for her, because Connelly just did such a terrific job playing that character.
Growing up, other than
Career Opportunities (which was enjoyable, but not a really good film and doesn't come any where near touching John Hughes' better work), I don't think I've seen anything from Jennifer Connelly until my late teens when I saw
A Beautiful Mind for the first time. But man... it was worth a wait, because she was absolutely
SUPERB in that movie. Being a stupid teenager at the time, when I watched it... I thought, "Well, this is going to be a boring piece of shit." But as soon as Jennifer Connelly graced the screen, I feel back in love with her like when I was a child. Her beauty strucks you first, but then you start watching the movie... and it's her performance that leaves you in awe, not her beauty, which is something a lot of women that beautiful could never pull off. But Jennifer Connelly was absolutely flawless in a Beautiful Mind. Flawless. However, as great as she was... it's still no where near being her greatest performance. That honor belongs to the absolute masterpiece, and in my opinion, the greatest movie this decade,
Requiem for a Dream.
I was honestly blown away with
Requiem for a Dream when I first saw it. I was either 18 or 19 years old, and I saw it on TV, I pressed info, and saw it starred Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Waynes. Now, I use to absolutely love Marlon Waynes. I still like him, but for years he was my favorite comedic actor. So when I saw those two names together in a film, I just had to watch it. The info was very limited to that it's about a couple of drug addicts, so a part of me thought this was going to be a drug comedy. But fuck... was I ever wrong.
Requiem for a Dream will, I think, forever remain as the most powerful, touching, heartbreaking film I've ever watched. Even today, after seeing it more times than I can count, I still get chills every time I watch it. My heart still gets broken every time sit down to watch this film. And even though it's Marlon Waynes character who touches me the most, Jennifer Connelly's character is in a close, close second. You just look at this beautiful woman and you hear her dreams and aspirations, you see the love she has for her boyfriend, and you see all of that, plus her life, get crumbled down because of addiction. You see her destroy herself because of addiction. You see her do things that you just know, two years earlier, she would've never dreamed of doing because of addiction. And it just kills you to witness it.
Jennifer Connelly's portrait Marion Silver in
Requiem for a Dream is so perfect, hell... it's too perfect. What she did in that film still blows me away to this day. It really does. She'll always have a special place is my heart for have the courage and skill to do this role the way she did it.
And while that's by and large my favorite work from this wonderful woman... I still have to give praise to some of her other work. House of Sand and Fog, for example, is a fantastic film where her performance was once again flawless. Little Children and Blood Diamond were my two favorite movies of 2006 outside of The Departed, and she was superb in those as well. And while I'm not particularly a fan of Hulk, Dark City, The Hot Spot, Dark Water and Inventing the Abbotts... Jennifer Connelly was still single handily what made those films tolerable for me to sit through the entire picture.
So, all and all... great, great actress and in my book, one of the greatest of all time. She'll probably never get the recognition she deserves, but to me... it is impossible for you to start rolling off the names of actors and actresses whose body of work comes anywhere near close to touching hers. I don't give a fuck about awards and all that nonsense, when you just look at the performances this woman has put on throughout her awesome career... it's truly astonishing.
