A couple of hours before I’m due to speak to Jennifer Connelly, I’m asked to push the time back by half an hour. It’s the annual puppet parade at her daughter Agnes’ school, which had to be re-arranged due to poor weather. Her puppet? A train. “It was a group of kids and they had made a train,” explains Connelly, every bit the proud mum, when we hook up over Zoom. She’s in Brooklyn Heights, in the lush-looking townhouse that she shares with her British husband, actor Paul Bettany, and their children.
Behind her, the doorway opens out onto a living space, where I can see the back of a peach-coloured sofa, a round mirror on the wall and an Anglepoise lamp. Tasteful, graceful, low-key – words that could also apply to Connelly, a Hollywood star who has effortlessly managed a near 40-year career, starring with everyone from David Bowie to Russell Crowe, Jared Leto to Joaquin Phoenix. Along the way, there was an Oscar win for A Beautiful Mind, where she first met Bettany.
Now she’s about to top it all with , the exhilarating, fist-pumping sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise. A windswept-looking Cruise arrived by helicopter, while Connelly – a longtime Louis Vuitton ambassador – sparkled in a gold floor-length LV dress, flanked by Bettany and her eldest son, Kai Dugan. “It was a beautiful day,” she purrs.
