Jennifer Connelly

Real name: Jennifer Lynn Connelly

Birthday: 12 December, 1970

Birth city: Catskill Mountains, New York, USA.

Height: 5' 8 (172 cm)

Jennifer Lynn Connelly (born December 12, 1970 in the Catskill Mountains, New York) is an American film actress. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager, she has only recently received critical acclaim for her work, most notably for Requiem for a Dream (2000) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), for which she won an Academy Award as Academy Award for Best Supporting Best Supporting Actress.

Connelly is married to the British actor Paul Bettany, whom she met while working on a film; the couple has a son (born August 5, 2003). She has also a five-year-old son, Kai, from a previous relationship.

Connelly grew up in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge, attending St. Ann's School, except for four years the family spent living in Woodstock, New York. Her father was in the garment industry, and one his close friends through the trade was an advertising executive.

The executive friend suggested Jennifer audition at a model modelling agency. At the age of 10, her career started in newspaper and magazine ads, then moved to television commercials.

Her first film role was in the 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, where she danced for the role of "a young girl" in Sergio Leone's gangster epic. She followed that with a major role in Jim Henson's film Labyrinth (1986).

She began studying at Yale, but transferred two years later to Stanford.

She returned to films in the 1990s, in such titles as The Rocketeer (1990), Dark City (1998), and House of Sand and Fog (2003).

Around this time, Connelly had a strange career move, releasing Monologue of Love, a "charming" Japanese single with a semi-classical instrumental arrangement. The B-side of the tape is Message of Love, an interview with music in the background. Along with this odd Japanese single, she also has done many Japanese TV commercials.(Source: Wikipedia)