The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

Today the 51-year-old Oscar-winner is considered one

of Hollywood’s most talented and intriguing actresses,

now starring in both the train-bound sci-fi series Snow-

piercer (available here on Netflix) and with Tom Cruise in

the highly anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick. For

those of you who weren’t there first time round, Top Gun

pretty much defined the peacocking machismo of the

Eighties: it was all boys with silly nicknames (Iceman,

Goose) looping the loop in fighter jets, chest-bumping

on the beach and flicking each other with towels in the

locker room, and it introduced the term wingman to our

general vocabulary. It was the Tom Cruise vehicle

extraordinaire and it has taken him more than 35 years to

make the follow-up. Thanks to the magic of Hollywood,

Cruise, aka Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, has barely aged.

There are some changes, though, including lady pilots

(two of them, but no women in the military senior lead-

ership team). And there is Connelly as Penny Benjamin, a

former flame of Maverick’s who was name-checked in

the original and has now fully manifested, running a bar

called the Hard Deck and still harbouring feelings for her

impetuous pilot lover.

“I thought it was a big, fun movie it would be exciting

to be a part of,” Connelly says. “And who does those

sorts of movies better than Tom Cruise?”

Connelly had never worked with, or even met, Cruise

before becoming Penny to his Maverick. “I just

found him to be quite extraordinary,” she says. “He is

incredibly dedicated in everything he does.” Cruise

required that all the younger actors join him on an

intensive preparatory boot camp to be transformed into

credible elite fighter pilots. Connelly did not have to

submit to this (although I suspect she might have

enjoyed it), but she did have to learn how to sail a boat

— her character’s adrenaline fix of choice. “They

wanted Penny to be able to hold her own with

Maverick. She has a hefty dose of zest for life too,” she

says. Holding one’s own with Maverick included riding

pillion on his motorbike — superfast and helmet-free.

“I felt like I was in capable hands, I didn’t worry for a

moment about his skill as a motorcycle rider or as a

pilot ...” She also had to go in a two-seater plane, which

might have posed a problem, considering Connelly has

struggled with a fear of flying.

“Fortunately right before doing this film I was having

to commute a lot by plane and I thought, ‘This is just

unsustainable, I have to work through this issue,’ so

I just kind of found my angle,” she says. “My armchair

analysis of myself is that we’d had a health scare with our

youngest child, Agnes, when she was

very little. It wound up being nothing,

sort of a false alarm, but it was enough to

really frighten me. As a result I struggled

with separation. I never loved flying, but

it got worse the first time I travelled

without her, that was the first time I had

a real panic. I always knew it was some-

thing I could outthink because I was

always better when I was coming home.”

Connelly does a lot of thinking: there

are long pauses in our conversation

while she thinks about the most accu-

rate way to answer a question, and she

was even able to think her way into wanting to be an

actress — eventually.

She was raised in New York and its rural environs. Her

parents have both died, but her father was in the garment

business and her mother was an antiques dealer. An only

child, she was quiet and self-contained. “I just wanted to

stand on my mark, know all my lines, make everyone

happy,” she says. “I didn’t bring all of myself to my work,

it wasn’t something that I was really doing for myself.

I didn’t start working because I wanted to start working,

I started because [of ] other people.” There were magical

moments, though, in particular making Labyrinth, aged

14, with David Bowie. “Oh my God, it was such a joy and

a privilege, one of the highlights of all the 40 years I’ve

had making movies. He was so kind to me — he was so

kind to everyone, easy and friendly and telling jokes.”

She won a place at Yale and studied English literature

(she loves Virginia Woolf ), but was embarrassed when a

professor mentioned that he had seen her on a poster

for the comedy Career Opportunities, riding a plastic

rocking horse. “There was a period where I didn’t know

if I wanted to continue working, because I didn’t find it

deeply fulfilling,” she says. “Then there

was a very conscious process of experi-

menting with what would happen if

I tried to make it my own thing, untan-

gled it from something that I did for

other people.”

Connelly transferred to a drama

course at Stanford and then moved to

LA. “For me it was literally about going

to work by myself, taking responsibility

for it creatively, feeling like I wanted to

find things that really spoke to me.”

This resulted in the sort of harder-edged

films for which she is celebrated, like

‘I thought it

would be

exciting to be

a part of. And

who does those

sorts of movies

better than

Tom Cruise?’

Connelly with

Tom Cruise

in Top Gun:

Maverick

The Sunday Times Style • 11