Jennifer Connelly

Background

Jennifer Connelly was born on December 12, 1970, in Cairo, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. She is the daughter of Ilene, an antique dealer, and Gerard Karl Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father was Catholic of Irish descent and her mother was Jewish, having been educated in a yeshiva. Connelly’s maternal great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. The actress was raised in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, where she attended Saint Ann’s, a private school specializing in the arts.

In 1976, Connelly’s family moved to Woodstock to escape the pollution as her father suffered from asthma. When she was 10 years old, a publicist friend of her father’s suggested that she audition to be a model. Her parents agreed and sent a picture of her to the Ford Modeling Agency, which they added to their list almost immediately. Connelly then began modeling for print ads before moving on to television commercials. In 1981, the family moved back to Brooklyn Heights and young Connelly returned to Saint Ann’s School. The next year, she landed her first role in a major movie — the young Deborah Gelly, an aspiring actress, and dancer. Despite having no ballet training, she performed a ballet routine at the audition. Her brilliant acting, and the resemblance of her nose to that of Elizabeth McGovern, who played the adult character, led to her being cast. The film, “Once Upon a Time in America,” was released in 1984. She then appeared on the covers of several issues of the teen magazine “Seventeen” in 1986 and 1988.

After graduating from high school, Connelly decided to study English literature at Yale University in 1988. She describes herself as a conscientious student who wasn’t really concerned about having a social life or sleeping or eating a lot. She considered herself a geek who spent most of her time in the library. After two years at Yale, she transferred to Stanford University to study acting. Encouraged by her parents to continue with her film career, she dropped out of college and returned to the film industry the same year.

In some interviews, she revealed that while modeling, she had no aspirations to become an actress while modeling. Her most recent movie is “Top Gun: Maverick,” where she plays the role of Penelope “Penny” Benjamin, the love interest of Tom Cruise’s character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.