By Iain Blair

Bumped into the gorgeous Jennifer Connelly in the elevator at the Four Seasons hotel and caught up with her latest news. “The family’s great, we’re all gearing up for the holidays,” she told me. She’s also very busy with film work, and apart from starring in The Day The Earth Stood Still redo, she is set to show off her vocal talents in Shane Ackner’s upcoming animated film 9, along with John C. Reilly, Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau. Her first film was Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America and since then, she’s worked with most of the top directors, with film credits that include Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond, Todd Field’s Little Children, Walter Salles’ Dark Water, Vadim Perelman’s House of Sand and Fog, Ang Lee’s The Hulk and Ed Harris’ Pollock. She also starred in Darren Aronofsky’s critically acclaimed Requiem For a Dream and received a Golden Globe, BAFTA, AFI, and Academy Award for her role in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind.

She told me that next up is Creation, a biopic on the life of Charles Darwin, which stars her husband Paul Bettany as Charles and herself as Emma Darwin. It turns out that the project’s Brit director Jon Amiel (The Core, Entrapment) is also supporting Directors Guild Trust Direct Access Candidate Sarah Grohnert, by providing her the opportunity to observe him at work on Creation. The Recorded Picture Company production is shooting in the UK and will be accommodating Sarah Grohnert on set and during rehearsals and production meetings two to three days per week right through to postproduction. This offers her a great chance to learn more about a director’s role, their responsibilities and methods of practice on a large feature film production through observation and discussion with a professional director. Direct Access; run in association with Skillset, is the only scheme of its kind in the UK. Similar to the established U.S. industry standard DGA Trainee placements, the Directors Guild Trust aims to bridge the wide gap of knowledge and skills between working directors and new talent—a very timely idea.

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