{"id":87601,"date":"2023-11-15T10:06:47","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/?p=87601"},"modified":"2023-11-15T10:06:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:06:47","slug":"i-love-that-kind-of-brutal-honesty-jennifer-connelly-embraces-her-bad-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebritytidings.com\/lifestyle\/i-love-that-kind-of-brutal-honesty-jennifer-connelly-embraces-her-bad-side\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I love that kind of brutal honesty\u2019: Jennifer Connelly embraces her bad side"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Karl Quinn<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jennifer Connelly says she was intimidated by the character Lucy she plays in Bad Behaviour.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty<\/cite><\/p>\n

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In a moment of reluctant self-reflection, former child actor Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) describes herself with brutal honesty. She is, she tells a roomful of guests at a wellness retreat, \u201cstill just a greedy, needy, lazy, paranoid human living off the money I made from a character that gave me an eating disorder\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Connelly wants to make it clear that despite the fact she started modelling as a child and acting in her teens, the words Lucy speaks sprung from Alice Englert \u2013 the writer-director and co-star of Bad Behaviour<\/i> \u2013 and not from her.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ben Whishaw, Dash Nekrasova and Connelly star in Alice Englert\u2019s debut feature Bad Behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we are similar people,\u201d she says of Lucy. \u201cBut I was interested in her. I thought it was an interesting character, really well written, so I was intrigued by her and kind of intimidated by her as a character to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her own experience as a young actor was, she says, \u201ca mixed bag\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike most experiences we have, or ways that we grew up, there are things about it that are amazing, and things about it that are trickier. But I can\u2019t complain. I love the work I do, and I feel privileged to do the job I do. Every time I\u2019m working I\u2019m aware of what an amazing opportunity it is, and how grateful I am to still be doing what I do, having done it for so long, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Englert (left) and Connolly play a mother and daughter struggling to connect.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ahi Films<\/cite><\/p>\n

Forty years after she made her big-screen debut in Sergio Leone\u2019s Once Upon a Time in America<\/i> \u2013 and 22 years after she won the best supporting actress Oscar for A Beautiful Mind <\/i>\u2013 Connelly appears to be enjoying a career revival.<\/p>\n

She starred opposite Tom Cruise in the biggest movie of 2022, Top Gun: Maverick<\/i>, and she\u2019s filmed four seasons of Snowpiercer<\/i>, the sci-fi thriller set aboard a high-speed train that endlessly travels through a post-apocalyptic landscape.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jennifer Connelly in Once Up a Time in America, her first role on-screen role. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bad Behaviour<\/i> \u2013 the debut feature from the daughter of Oscar-winning director Jane Campion \u2013 is on a far smaller scale, but is evidence of the unwavering eye for quirky material that has led to Connelly doing films such as Requiem For a Dream<\/i>, Dark City<\/i> and Mulholland Falls<\/i> alongside more comfortable box office fare.<\/p>\n

But if there\u2019s something to be read into the breadth of work she still enjoys at 53 about the way the business has changed, Connelly isn\u2019t biting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Connelly with Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. She won the best supporting actress Oscar in 2002 for her role in the film. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m loath to make big generalised statements because I guess I\u2019m always looking for the things that are exceptions anyway, the things that stand out and feel special and different, and I guess those are kind of one-offs at any age, or have been,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve always tried to find characters or projects where there\u2019s something that intrigues me in them, that feels surprising or challenging or just exciting to be part of and work on.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Connelly (centre) with co-stars Ben Whishaw and Alice Englert, who also wrote and directed the film, at Sundance in January.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n

In the character of Lucy, there\u2019s plenty of meat to sink her teeth into. She\u2019s aimless, angry, struggling to connect with her daughter (Englert), and with her innermost self. Whatever it is she hopes to find at the \u201csemi-silent wilderness retreat\u201d she heads to in the wilds of northern California (it was actually shot in New Zealand), under the guidance of spiritual self-help guru Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw), it evades her.<\/p>\n

Her fellow seekers seem to find enlightenment far more easily, especially the young model and influencer Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova, who played Comfrey, the PR maven and Greg\u2019s almost love interest in season three of Succession<\/i>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Filming the regression exercise, in which Lucy imagines herself as a baby, was one of the highlights of making the film for Connelly.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ahi Films<\/cite><\/p>\n

To Lucy, the whole thing looks and feels like a sham. It\u2019s hard not to share her disdain for the smug self-satisfaction of those who claim to have broken through and seem to have at their disposal a preformed vocabulary to match.<\/p>\n

The way Lucy responds to it all, though, is shocking. Something in her is unmoored by a regression exercise in which she plays baby to Beverly\u2019s mother \u2013 and she violently attacks the younger woman with a chair.<\/p>\n

Doing that scene was, Connelly says, the scariest element in a film in which she is frequently laid bare emotionally.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick \u2013 the second highest grossing film of 2022.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Paramount<\/cite><\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that\u2019s a little bit stunty, where you feel like potentially someone could get hurt, I find a little frightening, a little anxiety inducing,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it gave me a little shot of adrenaline doing that scene, worrying something could go wrong. But of course, nothing did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though it is Connelly who leads the story, Englert runs a close second. As well as writing and directing, she plays Lucy\u2019s stunt-performer daughter Dylan. She also co-wrote the score, and sings on the song that closes the film.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With Jared Leto in Darren Aronofksy\u2019s Requiem For a Dream (2000).<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Dendy Films<\/cite><\/p>\n

All of which might prompt us to wonder how much the film is autobiographical. The official line is that it \u201cis not specifically about Alice Englert\u2019s relationship with her mother\u201d, who crops up in a cameo as a doctor. It was, however, \u201cinspired by numerous spiritual retreats she\u2019s attended over the years alongside her mother\u201d.<\/p>\n

Englert has said most of the characters in it are \u201cretreat archetypes\u201d that she herself has played \u201cat one point or another in her own quest for spiritual understanding\u201d.<\/p>\n

Do you have any experience of that kind of spiritual quest, I ask Connelly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been on a retreat like that, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does it make you want to go?<\/p>\n

\u201cLord, no,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cThat was enough. When I read the script, I thought the baby exercise was particularly deliciously funny and was very much looking forward to filming it. And it was pretty funny, but also not. It was funny and also horrible and painful.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause Lucy actually hadn\u2019t been held and looked after in that way, and it\u2019s hilarious and awful at the same time that this woman who she\u2019s so triggered by having this sort of half-assed embrace, she can\u2019t contain this well of emotion, you know. It\u2019s hilarious, and also really sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sense, Lucy is a grown-up who has never quite grown up. Denied the love she needed from her self-absorbed parents, she struggles to provide the same to her daughter. She\u2019s trapped in a cycle of stunted emotions, of neediness, and failure to ask for, or receive, what it is she most craves.<\/p>\n

It could all be rather maudlin. However, in Englert\u2019s inexperienced but clearly adept hands it\u2019s sardonic and genuinely touching.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that kind of brutal honesty, but also the humour it brought to looking at these themes,\u201d says Connelly. \u201cIntergenerational trauma is at work, people who have good intentions and want to do right [but can\u2019t].<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly in Snowpiercer.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n

\u201cI think Lucy is a mother who hasn\u2019t come to terms with the way she was parented and therefore much gets lost in translation with her own parenting. I think she really feels love for her daughter, but doesn\u2019t quite know how to behave in a loving way, or from love.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s an investigation of that kind of trap, where that breakdown happens, and kind of follows a mother and daughter trying to break that cycle. But it does it in a way that\u2019s funny, which I really like, and empathetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not lampooning these issues,\u201d she adds, of Englert. \u201cI think she\u2019s taking them, and searching for peace and happiness and a way to live a good life and be a good person. I think that\u2019s what all these characters are trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Lucy isn\u2019t alone in acting badly, she is the most enthusiastic practitioner of it. And for Connelly, that was incredibly appealing as a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer behaviour is quite extreme and awful at times, so how do you play that woman with love and understanding and not make her a parody? Off the bat, I didn\u2019t quite understand her, but I really wanted to figure out how I could<\/i> understand her.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Connelly, it\u2019s not the points of similarity between her and Lucy that matter, but the differences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t looking for parallels to my own life,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m working I\u2019m not trying to find myself in the characters or trying to draw on my own life. It\u2019s a work of fiction, a fictional character, and finding the way to make those fictional characters feel real is for me the fun of making movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bad Behaviour is released in cinemas on<\/p>\n

Contact the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. <\/i><\/b>Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday<\/i><\/b>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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By Karl Quinn Jennifer Connelly says she was intimidated by the character Lucy she plays in Bad Behaviour.Credit: Getty Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. In a moment of reluctant self-reflection, former child actor Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) describes herself with brutal honesty. 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