Jennifer Connelly Scares Up "Dark Water"

In Theaters July 8

Celebrity mom Jennifer Connelly has juggled acting and her family for the last seven years, so it is about time that she played a mother in a film. Too bad it had to be the horror film Dark Water, where she and her child are haunted in their run down apartment in the Roosevelt Island section of New York City.

“I think it will have a real resonance with parents because I think it is something that a lot of parents go through,” she said. “People have asked me, ‘Do you think this character is really crazy?’ I really don’t. I think this character is really broken. I think this character is amazingly resilient and strong given where she has come from and I think that she is someone who has never been mothered and she is set up to mother so that she can look after herself. And I think parents the world over struggle with sort of the ghosts from their own childhood and how that, despite their best intentions, sometimes, affects how they are with their children in turn. I think it’s a film that can be appreciated by parents and non-parents alike. I think parents will find that quite chilling.”

Fortunately for Connelly, she is not going through a divorce like her Dark Water character, and as a movie star, she can afford to live in nice places. Best of all, she can keep her children close to her when she goes to work.

“I try to integrate the two as much as possible in that I’ve gotten comfortable working with having my kids around. And it’s also great that I work and then I can take time off. I’m not someone who likes to do movies back to back, so I can do Dark Water and then have months and months and months off. I mean, I just haven’t worked for ages now and I’ve been with the kids. Both are really important to me, my career and my children.”

The last year has been all family time for Connelly. “After I finished this which is I guess last summer, I wanted to be with my youngest son, Stellan, who was really little and hang out with the family. And then my husband, Paul, was doing a project that wound up getting moved a little bit. We’re trying to do a one on one off kind of thing, so I wanted to be not working while he was working. So he’s just wrapped and I’m going to start another film.”

Connelly’s first son, Kai, is now seven and Stellan is almost two. While she admits to being a somewhat overprotective mother the firs time around, she is mellowing out now. “With the second one I think that I've already found a place to be in the world where I felt safe and I had found my home already. I was still looking for that when I had my first if that makes any sense. So my love wasn't mixed up with my searching for something else. I think that people that look for safety, like a niche in the world, and that's just to say that I was still looking for what that would be. I studied religion and I studied philosophy and I had different relationships. I was a climber and I was a biker. I was a student. And then I became a mom and I quieted down.”

Also a native New Yorker, Connelly could relate somewhat to the environment of Dark Water, though she spends little time on Roosevelt Island. “It certainly doesn’t feel like New York City which is very odd and I think works very well for the film. It’s strange how much it feels like a character and not far off from Dahlia’s character, this sort of history of a bit of madness and illness, what with the asylum that was there and the hospital. And so close to so much vitality. New York City with all its bustling life is right there, but just a little bit out of reach.”

Connelly keeps her family in New York, and while she frequently travels to Los Angeles for work, she has no interest in going Hollywood. “There’s a huge difference between living in LA and New York I think. I mean, I haven’t lived in LA but just when I’m there, I’m working, I guess because even though we all know there’s a lot that goes on in Los Angeles, it still feels like a mono-industrial town. So wherever you go there are people who are in the movie business or want to be in the movie business so people tend to look for it more. Whereas I think there’s so much going on in New York, people get on the subway, they don’t necessarily expect to see, they’re not on the lookout for it so I think you blend in a lot more. And Brooklyn is one more step. No one cares.”

Dark Water opens July 8.