Jennifer Connelly Quotes

Quotes by and about Jennifer Connelly

(Continued from her main entry on the site.)

Connelly: "I've always wanted to understand people."

Connelly: "[It's important for me to] feel connected to the people [I'm] working with."

Connelly: "[I] try to understand the reasons why people find themselves in these situations and try to understand why people make these kinds of choices that we think are reprehensible."

Connelly: "I am not one of those people who thinks it is cool to show up late or be unruly or awkward."

Connelly: "[As a child model] I hated having my picture taken. I think I was pretty shy."

Connelly: "[Working so much as a child] made me a different kind of student, I think. Because when I was a kid I was travelling so much that when I was in school, I became quite focused on catching up and doing the work. It's already sort of my personality - I'm a bit of an overachiever, kind of [a] disciplinarian and hard on myself. I think [being away so much] augmented that tendency that I already had."

Connelly: "I'm very hard on myself. I don't want to disappoint myself or other people. I need to have a high standard all the time; I can't mess up."

Connelly: "I was an overly polite teenager, and it didn't serve me particularly well. I wanted to be good and be nice and be a peacemaker. I think it made me precocious on one level and stunted on another. I had my moments of frustration."

Connelly: "[Modelling] wasn't my niche, shall we say. I felt really self-conscious. There came a point when I remember ... I must have been about 15 and wearing a prom dress for a photo shoot and I had to hold some boy's hand and jump up and down on a trampoline and look really happy about going to the prom, and I thought, 'This just isn't for me.'"

Connelly: "[Winning an Oscar] was all horrible. It's pretentious to write a speech. You seem glib if you don't write a speech. Do you learn the speech, or do you not learn the speech? How do you win in this situation? It all feels a bit awkward."

[Interviewer: "What was it like to be defined by being beautiful?"]
Connelly: "It's uncomfortable to talk about - there's no way to come off right! If you say you are beautiful, you sound obnoxious, and if you deny it, doesn't that sound obnoxious?"

Connelly: "[Russell Crowe] has a very charismatic, strong personality which can be overbearing. I've seen a lot of people falter when trying to talk to him. I felt strongly about not letting that happen."

Joaquin Phoenix: "She's incredibly intelligent. She talks about things I've never heard of. ... She has an intellectual understanding of acting and creating character and movement and all these things."

Ron Howard: "With Jennifer, there's a sense of a person who's not a joiner, who follows her own path. It's not aloofness - that implies a kind of disdain, which I don't think she has. It's sort of a singular perspective on the world."

Esquire Magazine: "She is clever, imaginative and principled; perhaps the first time a Hollywood star has ever combined those particular qualities."

Claudia Llosa: "She is driven by the desire to understand why we act the way we do, why we behave a certain way."

Tom Shone: "When she was laboring through a series of rom-com-ish dramas (He's Just Not That Into You, Stuck in Love, The Dilemma) [she wore] the expression of Antigone making conversation at a Tupperware party."