Jennifer Connelly: I Know People Who "Tortured Themselves" For Beauty

Jennifer Connelly is aware of the price that comes with beauty. The 43-year-old actress has been in the business since the early ’80s, and as the former child star prepares for a standout year in 2014 — starring in Darren Aronofsky‘s Biblical epic, Noah, and her husband Paul Bettany‘s directorial debut, Shelter — the drop-dead gorgeous star reflects on her career and the idea of beauty in the February 2014 issue of Allure. 

“The thing that really matters to me is well-being and happiness,” the mother of three told the magazine. “Maybe it comes from knowing people who have tortured themselves trying to meet these strangely narrow and rigorous definitions of what our culture thinks is beautiful.”

The Oscar winner recently received some attention for dropping weight to play a homeless woman in Shelter. But after being married to the film’s director, Paul Bettany, for 11 years, the actress wasn’t concerned with the project. 

“One couldn’t feel more safe as an actor than knowing that the director’s your husband,” she told Allure. “It’s like, oh, if I really make a fool of myself, I can just say, ‘Honey, can you please not put that in the movie?’ That was a great perk.”

Bettany and Connelly share son Stellan, 10, and daughter Agnes, 2, and Connelly also has 16-year-old son Kai from a previous relationship.

But Connelly’s most buzzed about film in 2014 is Darren Aronofsky’s massive undertaking, Noah, which puts her, once again, alongside A-Lister Russell Crowe. 

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Not only is she also starring in this year’s Winter’s Tale with Crowe, but the duo also played love interests in 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, which, coincidentally, was where Connelly met her husband. And she had nothing but nice things to say about her on-screen love interest. 

“We have an easy intimacy,” she said. “We act together like the best kisses: We both bring equal passion.”

The February 2014 issue of Allure goes on stands on Jan. 28, 2014. 

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