Transcript note: This transcript is based on the original working script. It may contain production notes, draft wording, spelling mistakes or other material that differs from the finished video - these scripts were meant to be spoken, not read.

You wouldn't be on your own if you thought you knew Jennifer Connelly's first role was Labyrinth before she suddenly turned up again in Requiem for a Dream and A Beautiful Mind.

But, no.

Her early part of her career is nothing like the version people remember.

It’s scattered, inconsistent, and full of left turns - and it took her far longer than you’d expect to find the lane she was always meant to be in.

So, just how does someone go from a Roald Dahl TV show to an Oscar? Well, it starts more randomly than you'd think

Let's see how Jennifer Connelly got Famous, Eventually

[INTRO]

The Roald Dahl show?

Rather fittingly, Tales of The Unexpected.

It's an early British TV show, kind of like Black Mirror before it was Black Mirror. It was created by Roald Dahl of all people, it ran from 1979 to 1988.

Each episode was self contained and ended with some kind of twist.

Jennifer's episode was in the 5th Season episode “A Stranger in Town” where she played simply, “The Girl”.

The episode first aired in 1982, she'd have been around 12 at the time.

Not long after that she'd find herself in a music video with yet another British connection, a band called Duran Duran and a song called Union of the Snake.

It wasn't the start of a UK acting phase or anything like that.

Her Mother had enrolled her at Ford Models at around 10 years old.

Tales of the Unexpected and Music Videos often filmed in the States and pulled child actors from agencies like Ford Models, Jennifer was just one of the models they'd booked.

But modeling gigs and TV spots weren't the plan. Soon, Hollywood came calling - and her first real film role was a baptism by fire in one of the most serious gangster epics ever made.

She played Deborah in Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone's gangster epic back in 1984.

It’s only a small, short scene - But, it's a properly serious film with adult themes, a far cry from her first couple of roles but she holds her own more than you might expect proving she's clearly capable of handling it all.

If that felt like a dramatic leap, well - next she doubled down. The very next year, she pivoted hard - into a Dario Argento horror film where she played a girl who talks to insects.

Yeah. You heard that right.

Phenomena, or as you might know it - Creepers - It was re-edited for American audiences.

Jennifer played, uhm, Jennifer Corvino - A young girl who could communicate with insects.

And, naturally - She uses this ability to help track down a serial killer…

… Yeah.

It’s a - Well it’s a film with an acquired taste - Not helped with there being a few different versions of it kicking around .

Meh - It has its fans, I’m not one of them. Each to their own.

After that we see her return to a more, grounded, film - 1986’s Seven Minutes in Heaven.

A typical 80’s coming of age kind of film - It’s largely forgotten about now, but it’s a nice little time capsule of the era - It’s never going to offend anyone.

After a weird horror film and a forgotten teen comedy, she landed what should have been her star-making role: a fantasy epic with David Bowie and Jim Henson. But Labyrinth didn't just fail to launch her - it practically buried her.

Jennifer plays Sarah WIlliams, a young girl who must travel the aforementioned Labyrinth to save her baby brother from David Bowies Goblin King.

As much loved and remembered is the film these days, it actually flopped on release - It cost around $25 million to make and only returned about half of that at the box office.

Although it had a big name attached to it with David Bowie, and was a product of the imagination of Jim Henson - It was up against some big films in the same release window - Top Gun, The Karate Kid 2 and Ferris Bueller's Day off.

It should have been a bigger movie for Jennifer, but with it being basically dead on arrival she never got the credit she deserved - At the time at least - And so she quietly disappeared.

And I guess - That's what happens when you're that young and don't have a “type”, the Hollywood machine basically likes it when it can slot you somewhere.

And, they couldn't have a piece without a puzzle.

And this is where her career gets... weird. For the next decade, Jennifer Connelly became the queen of the almost hit - films that flopped on release, only to be rediscovered years later.

It’s like Hollywood kept giving her interesting projects and then fumbling the rollout.

The Hot Spot (1990) - the Dennis Hopper neo-noir that didn’t do nearly as well as it should have. Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, William Sadler - strong cast, strong director - but marketed completely wrong.

Critics were split, audiences stayed away, and it only found appreciation later on.

Mostly for Dennis Hopper and Don Johnson, to be honest. Still - people came around to it eventually.

Career Opportunities (1991)

Oieeee. Yeah. This one found a new life thanks to certain scenes with Jennifer and… well, the internet.

But more people know it exists now than when it came out.

It even got a 4K Blu-ray recently - which is not something anyone would’ve predicted back in 1991.

The Rocketeer (1991)

Another one nobody knew how to market at the time. It underperformed, but its audience found it later, and it’s now generally well regarded - especially for that retro pulp aesthetic and the way it basically previewed the superhero boom.

Higher Learning (1995)

A film ahead of its time. Released to mixed, polarising reviews, but a lot more respected now than it was back then.

I wouldn’t call it a cult film exactly - but definitely one to revisit if you never have.

And the list goes on.

Mulholland Falls, Inventing the Abbotts, Dark City - all pretty much bombed or underperformed on release, and all found favour later on.

Dark City especially didn’t hit until the home-video era.

And - Just as an FYI - If you’ve seen the Director's Cut of Dark City, that's her singing in the club scenes.

She was lip syncing originally to Anita Kelsey but it was restored when Alex Proyas put it back the way he always wanted it made.

She was good - but the films let her down in one way or another.

I mean, if you look at all of those films - She wasn’t the reason they didn’t work.

When a movie doesn’t perform it’s normally the lead that takes the hit - But - Here you had all these different projects that didn’t find their home, and then there’s just her.

Clearly giving it her all to films that just struggled one way or another.

Kinda like, Directors knew how talented she was but couldn’t actually give her what she needed.

It’s almost like a weird, bad joke.

By the late 90s, her filmography looked less like a career and more like a studio throwing ideas at a wall.

Nobody knew what to do with her - she could fit into anything, but nothing seemed to fit her.

Then, in 2000, everything changed. Not with one film, but with two.

Waking the Dead came first - And, it’s almost prophetic in that she’s playing another Sarah WIlliams - But - No - This isn’t some kind of Labyrinth sequel.

Although, I’m sure if you search the internet there is some crazy fan theory connecting them both.

But, for the rest of us - No - This one is one of those films nobody really talks about, but it mattered.

A political-romantic drama where Billy Crudup spends most of the runtime haunted by Jennifer Connelly’s character - literally and emotionally.

It’s the first time in years she’s given something with actual weight.

Waking the Dead proved she could carry emotional weight.

But Requiem for a Dream was the detonation.

If the first film showed her depth, the second showed her fearlessness - and suddenly, everyone was paying attention.

It's like a perfect storm with all the right things.

Requiem For a Dream is another of the internet's favourite films - but for entirely different reasons.

To say that watching it makes you feel uncomfortable is an understatement. Whenever there’s a list of “films you only watch once,” you can practically guarantee Requiem for a Dream will be there.

It’s almost a cliché at this point.

The film itself? Well. Yeah.

It’s simple enough - Requiem for a Dream follows four people in Brooklyn:

a mother and son, his girlfriend, and his best friend - and just tracks their drug addictions as everything slowly collapses around them.

No twist, no redemption, nothing dramatic in the traditional sense.

It’s four lives falling apart in real time, each one worse than the last.

Which might not sound horrific when you say it out loud - but oh boy. It doesn’t pull punches.

In fact, it keeps on punching when you’re already on the floor begging it to stop.

And in the middle of it all?

Jennifer Connelly gives the kind of performance nobody expected from her in the 90s - controlled, committed, and impossible to look away from

That attention led to the role that finally defined her: Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind.

After nearly twenty years of false starts, she wasn't just in a great film - she was its quiet, indispensable heart.”

The film tells the story of John Nash, played here by Russel Crowe - it's a biographical drama - John is a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, but any success he has is overshadowed by paranoid schizophrenia.

At the center of it all, Alicia. She’s the emotional anchor of the film - patient, restrained, and quietly resolute as his mental illness unravels their lives.

It's fair to say It’s not a flashy performance and it’s not designed to steal scenes, but what it does do is ground the entire film.

And that’s why the film lands as well as it does - and why it finally puts Jennifer Connelly exactly where she’d been heading all along.

Oscar, prestige and respected career well and truly established.

With an Oscar in hand, the industry finally stopped guessing. The scattered puzzle pieces snapped into place. She was no longer an experiment - she was an anchor.

And across the 2000s she glides from project to project. Not noisy films for the most part, fair enough - But always ones that earned a fair bit of respect.

House of Sand and Fog, Little Children, Reservation Road and taking mainstream swings with Hulk and Blood Diamond.

It’s interesting that once she found herself being handed roles with people like Kate Winslet and Ben Kingsley, where she’s not a love interest or, well - a piece of pretty scenery - She starts to take on her final form.

There was never any stretching or reinventing herself, it was all just the lane should always have been in - Cementing herself as a dramatic presence many films wouldn't be the same without.

Then she gets more selective with her work, more independent work or roles that rely on her presence than the size of the film around her.

She never really chased trends, never tried to break out again - she just kept working.

She even had a bonafide blockbuster under her belt with Top Gun: Maverick - It was good to her there, even if it wasn’t a massive role.

More recently she’s been popping up here and there, the excellent Snowpiercer and and the even more excellent mind bender Dark Matter with Joel Egerton.

Both well worth a watch if you’ve not seen either.

And, for those that have followed her career, even a little - It’s good to see her getting roles built for her control, restraint and maturity - Things she could always do when given the chance, but - She’s getting the recognition for it now at least.

No reinventions, no chasing youth - Just a confident performer finally cast as an adult without compromise.

But in the end, it was coherent - a career that makes perfect sense, but only when you look at it in reverse.

Everything before Requiem looks like a search.

Everything after A Beautiful Mind looks like an arrival.

She didn't have a late-career resurgence... because she never really left.

She was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

It’s certainly a different way to build a legacy - Kind of like being everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

It wouldn’t have been the first time an actor had gotten as far as, well - The Rocketter and just given up on it all - But Jennifer, well - She just, stuck around and waited,

And I think that’s why she feels, different - She wasn’t manufactured, she earned it.

Anyways…