Below: Louis Vuitton top, and dress, both POA, and ring, $18,200. Right: Louis Vuitton jacket, $6300, skirt, $5700, and shorts, POA.
photographY REGAN CAMERON
STYLING NAOMI SMITH
Words Alexandra English
EDITOR Georgie McCourt
photographY Regan Cameron/See Management.
STYLING Naomi Smith.
HAIR Serge Normant/Statement Artists.
MAKEUP Genevieve Herr/Sally Harlor.
MANICURE Mo Qin/The Wall Group.
PROP STYLIST Oscar Sanchez/See Management.
CREATIVE DIRECTION Rebecca Rhodes.
PRODUCTION See Management & Nicola Hanratty.
As she returns for season two of Dark Matter, the sci-fi thriller that posits the existence of an infinite number of lives and worlds, Jennifer Connelly is content in the one she has, thanks
JENN
IFER
CONN
ELLY
C
Louis Vuitton cape, POA.
“I thought that at the core there was a portrait of a marriage that I found really interesting”
lose your eyes. Wait, that’s not going to work. Finish reading, and then come back. I’m going to attempt to describe the multiverse, the quantum physics theory that states that everything that can exist does exist, all at once and in infinite universes. It’s a chaotic,
mind-melting concept best explained by 19-year-old bachelor of arts students spending a summer afternoon getting stoned in the park, but in the absence of one of those, I’ll try my best.
Imagine a moment when your life could have split in two. You faced a crossroads, big or small, and took one path, never knowing how your life could have turned out if you had walked down the other. Now, imagine there’s a version of yourself who did choose the other path, and they’re living the consequences of that decision in some other world. In that crossroads moment, you split into two selves, both equally alive and with the same amount of you-ness, only your consciousness stayed with the version of you who remained in this world. The other version, which likewise considers itself to be the most conscious, most “you” version of you, is living a life just as real and full as yours, only it’s taking place somewhere inaccessible to you.
Now, imagine that every time these two versions of you make a decision, they splinter into two more selves: one who went one way, one who went the other. Given that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day (there’s no data that says women make more daily decisions than men, but it feels true), that’s a lot of yous. An infinite amount of lives that are being lived by you, but not you. You with me? For example, on another Earth in another universe, there’s a version of you for whom The One Who Got Away in this world is The One Who Snores in that one. In another, you have a different job, a different set of friends, kids or no kids, that other rug you liked, maybe a fringe. There’s a world in which the loved ones you’ve lost are alive – and vice versa. There’s a world in which you’re not reading this story, and a world in which I didn’t write it.
D
aniela is not the first time Connelly, 55, has played the long-suffering wife of a tortured genius who appears to have multiple selves. In 2001, Connelly had an Oscar-winning turn in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s film that was based on the true story of the mathematical genius John Nash
(Russell Crowe), who revolutionised economics with his game theory, and whose schizophrenia has him believe that he is a covert decoder of Soviet communications during the Cold War. Connelly plays his wife, Alicia, herself a brilliant physicist. Like Daniela, Alicia is committed to her marriage, no matter what.
Of course, in the multiverse, there’s a world in which Connelly didn’t appear in A Beautiful Mind, which would have meant she never met her husband, Paul Bettany, who played Charles, John’s rowdy roommate, who turns out to be a delusion. (The couple, who married in 2003, share two children, Stellan, 23, and Agnes, 15, and Connelly also has an older son, Kai, 29, from her relationship with photographer David Dugan.)
In another world, there’s a Jennifer Connelly who didn’t start modelling at 10, and whose parents (Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard, a clothing manufacturer) didn’t support her acting career and didn’t drive their only child all over New York for auditions after school. There’s a Jennifer Connelly who didn’t appear in television commercials, on the covers of YA novels and Seventeen magazine in the 1980s, and who didn’t accidentally have a number-one hit song in Japan. There’s a Jennifer Connelly who didn’t land her first movie when she was 12 (Once Upon a Time in America, starring Robert De Niro), and another whose acting career ended 40 years ago with Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy Labyrinth, the cult-classic David Bowie goblin film, because she went to Yale to study English literature. (RIP Bowie, you would have loved the multiverse.)
But thankfully, we live in a world with this Jennifer Connelly, who transferred from Yale to Stanford to study drama before dropping out altogether. She’d already appeared in eight films by then, with her first leading roles coming out five years earlier, when she was 15: in Phenomena, in which she played a girl who could communicate with insects; and the coming-of-age film Seven Minutes in Heaven.
O
n the day of her marie claire shoot in New York, this world’s Jennifer Connelly shows up ready to dive into the racks and racks of Louis Vuitton’s cruise 2027 collection. “That was a really fun day,” she says when we catch up a week later. “We had a really good time doing that, and Regan is such
a fast photographer! I couldn’t believe it.”
Connelly is Louis Vuitton’s longest-serving brand ambassador, having joined in 2014, the year after Nicolas Ghesquière took over from Marc Jacobs as artistic director. He and Connelly met for the first time in 2002 when Ghesquière was creative director at Balenciaga and Connelly needed a dress to wear to the Oscars for A Beautiful Mind.
“I mean, speak of inspiring artists,” she enthuses at the mention of Ghesquière. “He is just brilliant. He’s pioneering but at the same time he has such an understanding of Vuitton’s history and legacy, and such respect for it. His collections are so balanced; so grounded yet playful, they can be strict yet soft. There’s always a counterpoint in his designs, and he creates such beautiful complexity in his work, and he’s able to produce that work and execute it with such finesse and expertise at Vuitton’s atelier.”
As for her personal style, Connelly is all about the basics done well. On a day off, “I’m in jeans and a white T-shirt,” she says with a laugh. “With my [Louis Vuitton] heritage bag. If I’m walking my dog, I’ll put on a leather jacket and sneakers. It’s very simple: trousers, T-shirt, a good jacket. I’m a sucker for a good jacket and a great pair of jeans.”
When asked for her perfect day, Connelly laughs and says, “Can I have a few?” Thanks to the multiverse, she can have as many as she likes. “I’m torn – I mean, a day by the sea with my family, jumping into the water, that’s heaven for me,” she says. “I also love skiing. But all these activities feature my family. My kids are all such different ages, when we’re all together, that’s the perfect day pretty much anywhere.” She laughs and adds, “But if you throw on top of that, like, we’re in Greece or we’re skiing in the mountains, that’s even better.”
Family is crucial for Connelly, who has only just returned from five months away filming Safe Houses in Madrid. “I came home almost every weekend between April and June, which was a lot, and then when Agnes finished school, she and Paul came to stay in Madrid.” Stellan, who is studying in London, “came a few times to visit, which was really great. My oldest one was stuck here working, but now that we’re home, we see a lot of him. I’m happy to have my days off and be a soccer mom again.”
So it makes sense that when asked for her perfect day off at home, it’s the day she had today. “My husband and I take our daughter to school every day, even though she’s 15,” Connelly says, laughing. “She knows it’s inevitable, she knows not to resist. And in the fall, we’re soccer parents – she has two matches this week. So in the afternoon we’ll go and watch her matches. In between, I just came back from a nice stroll along the water in the park with my husband and our dog. I’ll read my book, make some lunch, we have dinner with friends – easy stuff, simple stuff.”
Speaking of friends, at that moment, Connelly apologises for not putting her phone on silent. It’s Emmys day, and “my friend and neighbour Matthew Rhys just texted me, he’s won two Emmys, I’m so happy for him”. (He didn’t just win two Emmys, he made history as the first actor to win two lead acting awards in a single year for his performances in Widow’s Bay and The Beast in Me. He also became the first person to win lead acting awards in the drama, comedy and limited series categories across a career.)
But back to her perfect day: “I’ll have my run – I love to run. I’m training for the New York City Marathon on November 1,” she says, before correcting herself: “I never want to commit to saying I’m running it because last year I got injured right before and couldn’t run.” She laughs and adds, “I’m practising … for a potential marathon.”
As we know by now, there’s a world in which Jennifer Connelly runs the marathon, and a world in which she doesn’t. Only time will tell what this world’s Jennifer Connelly will do. OK, now close your eyes…
Dark Matter is streaming now on Apple TV.
In 2000, she broke through to the mainstream in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, alongside a yet-to-be-revealed-as-problematic Jared Leto. For her performance as Marion Silver, an aspiring fashion designer turned heroin addict and sex worker, Connelly was praised for her emotionally devastating portrayal of addiction. Between Requiem for a Dream and A Beautiful Mind, she also played another genius’ wife, the abstract artist Ruth Kligman in Pollock, based on the life and career of the artist Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris).
Connelly continued to work consistently through the era of young kids, and upped the ante in the past few years with the dystopian 2020 series Snowpiercer, which is set seven years after Earth has become a frozen wasteland; 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick with Tom Cruise; Bad Behaviour, for which Alice Englert (Jane Campion’s daughter) made her directorial debut and played Connelly’s daughter, in 2023; and Dark Matter.
Next up is Safe Houses, another Apple TV series, with Ana de Armas. In the eight-part international espionage series, Connelly plays the wife of a murdered CIA officer, and de Armas is accused of killing him. Details are scant, but they wrapped filming in August and it’s expected to be released next year.
Louis Vuitton cape, POA, pants, $7850, and shorts, POA
Louis Vuitton jacket, $13,400, skirt, $6900, belt and socks, both POA, and shoes, $3750.
Above: Louis Vuitton dress, POA. Right: Louis Vuitton dress (with skirt), POA, shoes, $3750, and ring, $18,200.
If you’ve seen Jennifer Connelly and Joel Edgerton’s Apple TV series, Dark Matter, my efforts at explaining the multiverse were a waste of time, sorry. Blake Crouch’s sci-fi show, which he adapted from his 2016 novel of the same name, not only expertly explains the concept of the multiverse, but shows it in action through the use of a black metallic box (known conveniently as The Box) that acts as a corridor passing through the multiverse, with an infinite number of doors that open into different worlds. The Box technology is the secret project of Velocity Labs, and if you want to use it, you need to inject yourself with a special ampoule, open a door at random and hope for the best.
In season one, which aired in 2024, we were introduced to Jason Dessen (played by Edgerton), a college physics professor living in Chicago with his gallerist wife and love-of-his-life, Daniela (Connelly), and their teenage son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). After a night at the local bar celebrating his best friend winning a major physics prize, Jason is beaten and abducted by a masked version of himself from another world. Jason the Original (now known as Jason1) wakes up confused and sore in a world where he’s a rich and famous rockstar physicist, while Jason2, who actually is that physicist, steals his less-successful counterpart’s life to be with Daniela and Charlie.
We come to learn that Jason2 created The Box out of regret. Sixteen years earlier, he’d rejected Daniela to dedicate his life to science. Realising his mistake too late, he created a way to travel through the multiverse to violently abduct his not-as-clever self and take his place as Daniela’s husband. As a high-school science failure, it’s not for me to say, but it seems a time machine might have been better. As Jason1 tries to find the door to his world, he encounters many other possible lives, and many other Danielas, some of whom are a Jason’s wife, while others are not. But the problem is that with every door he opens, he unknowingly creates another Jason: the one who goes through the door, and the one who slams it shut. All of those Jasons are now trying to make it back to the same Daniela, creating more Jasons in the process.
Meanwhile, Jason2 is trying to pass himself off as Jason1. But forgetting his son’s nut allergy and the anniversary of a family tragedy, as well as a new nightly flossing habit and a desire for better clothes, alerts Daniela to the fact that all is not right with her husband.
It’s complicated and mind-bendy but, thankfully, being a physics professor, Jason1 knows how to turn quantum physics into pop science, or if you lean more right-brained, you’ll still be able to follow along – for the most part. (On that note, Dark Matter is not a background binge series. It only takes a couple of scrolls on your phone to lose track of the Jasons.)
“I thought it would be a really fun show; I thought it would be entertaining and exciting with all the world-building,” Connelly says of what initially drew her to the series. “But at the same time, I thought that at the core there was a portrait of a marriage that I found really interesting, and I thought the show had space to be both things.” Leave it to Connelly to find a beating heart at the centre of a sci-fi series. She once described Hulk, the 2003 film in which she played the nuclear physicist Dr Betty Ross, not as a Marvel superhero movie about a man who turns into a giant green monster when he’s angry, but as “a five-character family psychodrama”.
Season one of Dark Matter didn’t give us a happily ever after. In season two (which is currently dropping weekly until October 30), the Dessen family are in crisis. Jason1 has reunited with Daniela and Charlie, and they’re using The Box to try to find a world in which they can lead a somewhat normal life. (The other Jasons keep finding Daniela and begging her to be with them – some more forcefully than others.) And while Daniela has chosen her Jason, the couple can’t unknow what they know: that there are other lives out there, other versions of each other they could have been with. Meanwhile, Charlie is lonely. Every time he starts to settle in, a different Jason appears and they need to relocate to a new world. Jason1 is increasingly obsessed with The Box, oscillating between destroying it and trying to understand it as a guise for trying to understand Jason2 – the version of himself who was capable of creating The Box.
As for Daniela, after an episode of paranoia during which she keeps seeing different versions of her husband, she realises it’s triggering a very deep childhood trauma. “[The family] starts to unravel and, for Daniela in particular, nothing makes sense anymore,” Connelly says. The experience of all the Jasons “resonates with her in a place that’s so old, and I thought it was really interesting [that the series] went there with this”. She goes on to explain: “Daniela finds herself in a situation that echoes something she experienced in her childhood in such an extreme way that she has to go on a mission to confront that and make peace with it so she can deal with the things that are in front of her now instead of the ghosts of the past.”
Season one used the multiverse concept to ask an impossible question: if you could see every life you could have lived, would you go back to the one you have? And season two asks a harder one: once you know other lives exist, how do you stay in the one you chose? These are questions Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard also posed in his 1843 book Either/Or about how every decision in life leads to double regret because it’s human nature to romanticise the path not taken. (“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it,” he wrote.) Still, while the other characters are flinging themselves between their possible lives, looking for the best one, Daniela remains steadfast in her commitment to the life she chose: being married to Jason1.
“I like Daniela as a character. I think she is someone who, when confronted with these difficult situations, really wants to stay the course,” Connelly says. “Some of the characters are looking for something better on the other side of a door, but she feels completely committed to the life she’s built with her husband; she just doesn’t know how to walk that path anymore. We’re tracking her breakdown, but I think she demonstrates enormous strength of character.”
Louis Vuitton dress, $8850, and choker, $2540.
"I’m a sucker for a good jacket and a great pair of jeans"
Louis Vuitton coat, $16,700, skirt, $7500, and shoes, $4350.
"I’m happy to have my days off and be a soccer mom again"
Louis Vuitton dress, and choker, both POA.
Louis Vuitton dress, $8850.