Jennifer Connelly - American Actress, Child Model.

 

Connelly was born in Cairo, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. She is the daughter of Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Karl Connelly, a clothing manufacturer.^[3][4] Her father was Roman Catholic, and of Irish and Norwegian descent.^[5] Connelly's mother was Jewish,^[6][7] and was educated at a yeshiva;^[8][9] all of Connelly's maternal great-grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Poland and Russia.^[10][11] Connelly was raised primarily in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, where she attended Saint Ann's, a private school specializing in the arts.^[11] Her father suffered from asthma, so the family moved to Woodstock, New York, in 1976 to escape the city smog.^[3] Four years later, the family returned to Brooklyn Heights, and Connelly returned to Saint Ann's School.^[1]

After graduating from high school, Connelly studied English literature at Yale University in 1988. Connelly has described herself as a conscientious student who "wasn't really concerned with having a social life or sleeping or eating much. I was really nerdy and pretty much stayed in the law-school library, which is open 24 hours, most of the time I wasn't in class".^[12] After two years at Yale, Connelly transferred to Stanford University to study drama. There, she trained with Roy London, Howard Fine and Harold Guskin.^[13] Encouraged by her parents to continue with her film career,^[4] Connelly left college and returned to the movie industry the same year.^[14]

Connelly gained public recognition with Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy Labyrinth with David Bowie, in which she played Sarah Williams, a teenager on a quest to rescue her brother Toby from the world of goblins. Although a disappointment at the box office,^[28] the film later became a cult classic.^[29] The New York Times, while noting the importance of her part, panned her portrayal: "Jennifer Connelly as Sarah is unfortunately disappointing. ... She looks right, but she lacks conviction and seems to be reading rehearsed lines that are recited without belief in her goal or real need to accomplish it."^[30] In 1988, she began work as a ballet student in the Italian film Etoile which was released in 1989,^[31] and portrayed college student Gabby in Michael Hoffman's Some Girls.^[32]

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