Jennifer Connelly

Films: Blood Diamond

http://doppels.proboards.com  My take is that she was replaced at the end of the 90's. No movies for her in 1999, 2002 and 2004. Given the fact that her career skyrocketed again in 2000 with REQUIEM FOR A DREAM could be a clue to her (first) replacement. Is it me or the impostress has a shorter neck than the original?....Jennifer looks as if she were replaced after the film Dark City(1998).

Look alikes DANIEL DAY LEWIS and Connelly, Jennifer

http://doppels.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=2&page=84
Last post today, I promise!

About Jennifer Connelly. I can say with 100% certainty that the "Fennifer" we see today is not the Jennifer I worked with on a John Hughes film called Career Opportunities. I didn't get to act with her much, but I did see her film several scenes. At that time I only knew her from Labyrinth, and I knew she had been a model.

Back then she had a more - elfin - quality than Fennifer has ever had. Hard to describe. But definitely there was an overall look to her features, especially since she was about 19 or so when she filmed this and she was young, of a slightly off kilter elfin quality. All the features were "perfect," but the symmetry made you think "supernatural, beautiful creature" instead of plasticized girl.

One thing I was shocked by at the time was that a lot of the crew and production team, including the assistant director, were making really dismissive and nasty comments about her. I remember them arrogantly asserting that if this film didn't work commercially, if it wasn't a success, then "it would be over for her." Or they might have said "It's all over for her."

I was really struck by the implied violence of that statement. And these people were drop dead serious as they said this. I heard this said by two crew members and also by the assistant director at separate points in several days worth of filming as they were standing around before and after scenes were filmed. At the time I just dismissed it as the cruelties of show business and how you only get one shot sometimes at a big breakthrough role. But since learning about how many replacements are happening, this statement keeps haunting me as I consider its implications.

The film didn't do well at the box office at all, and you didn't hear from Jennifer again until she did The Rocketeers which did okay commercially. And she did a movie where she was topless and was suddenly in the limelight again. I think at this point it was all Fennifer, though. It's like the original quiet, shy, and pretty girl I observed is gone and this version is more womanly (bigger in her frame and curvier than Jennifer was. The Jennifer I saw was tallish and skinny all over. No extra flesh anywhere! More of a classic waif thin model physique. )

One thing that they did seem to get right with Fennifer is the eyebrows. The seem pretty close to the original's eyebrows. I'm amazed at how they can get the really bushy eyebrow look on a woman who doesn't have thick eyebrows, but they can do it. The most dramatic illustration of eyebrow transplants is the new Megan Fox- Fegan. You'll see in some early photos of Megan that at one point she had extremely thin, over-plucked eyebrows. Once you've damaged the eyebrow line to that extent it doesn't grow back out into a full bushy line again. The Fegan has perfect, thick brows, and they look so perfect you can tell the hair is a transplant. (Yes, they DO eyebrow transplants. Kind of a common procedure if a woman has overplucked and doesn't have a good eyebrow line anymore.)

Mask - Yes, I'm not entirely sure that the Jennifer Connelly replacement came in that early, either - only that she definitely was replaced at some point. Very sad because the girl I got to see on the set was very sweet, hard-working, creative, and dedicated to what she was doing. Why get rid of her? She seemed compliant and willing to do everything director John Hughes asked of her, and Hughes seemed very happy with her work. She would come up with little improvisations to the scenes and he loved all the little things she added. Like she was filming a scene where she was shoplifting and she was supposed to go from point a to point b in a store. She added lots of funny little moments along the way, interacting with a woman who was an extra whose character was supposed to watch her and discover she was shoplifting. Everything was unscripted and she had great natural timing and instincts. She would seem "perfect" in the sense of being a good actress - but something went on behind the scenes, obviously, to end up in a replacement situation. My guess is the casting couch. It's not usually just a casting couch - in show business it's like with modelling, they also usually prostitute young actresses out to other powerful people. Maybe that's where she drew the line? Or went along for a while, got the Rocketeer movie, that other drama where she was topless, and then had enough?

Artemis - I had forgotten about actresses having their back molars removed. You're right, that was common, to give actresses that high cheekboned look. I just was kind of shocked at the idea of having your entire jaw broken and realigned as Fane Fonda was talking about in that interview. Surely, such severe reconstructive surgery would take a long time to recover from? Anybody here ever had a broken jaw? Wouldn't it be many months of recovery? Sounds horrible, doesn't it!  

PS About the casting couch and prostituting out young models and actresses - this was why I gave up on show business. I could post a lot of stuff about this but it might not be appropriate in this thread. Suffice it to say that I had a TV show host, an assistant director on another TV show, and several "modelling agents" pretty much present the classic deal with the devil. You get work on TV or in films, but you work sporadically since jobs are not always available and the competition for women in the industry is so bad. In between you earn a living as a call girl/escort and you're often working for the same people who are in a position to get you bigger and more consistent acting work, so you want to stay on their good side. It's kind of a "pay to play" situation. You pay with your sexuality and remain on call 24/7 for these creepy guys, and if you're lucky, you might get some real acting work out of the deal. I kept ending up right at the brink of getting serious TV roles and some movie parts and always hit that wall where it was pretty much "do this or we just get the next girl to do it." There's no incentive for the system NOT to do this because so many men and women fall into it willingly.

I think this tends to happen more with unconnected people. I'm a nobody, no blue blood connections or money or anything. So I had to actually go to acting school, slave to get parts anywhere I could, and gradually try to approach acting like a real career. I wasn't one of those connected types who could make a phone call to my uncle fresh out of screenwriting school and instantly get a job on network TV as a writer. That stuff happens all the time. There are basically two tiers in show business. People who are legitimate in the sense that they actually have talent and don't have connections - but they're willing to prostitute themselves in some way (and if they change their minds, they probably get replaced at some point if they're famous enough.) And then there are those with connections who might have talent or might not, but they end up making good money and steady money in the biz usually due to their insider contacts.

Aug 24, 2010, 10:41am, artemis wrote:

Oh dear, I think we may have a Fusan.

(Bear with me - I still need to get a handle on image posting -)

Is this young woman from Rocky Horror the same as the woman presented as Susan Sarandon many years later?

Young Susan:

http://templeofgodrobert.blogspot.com/20....ctuer-show.html

Fusan of today's era: (photo notes say it's from 2005)

http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/9/0/1/2/2/1/i/4/5/3/o/Susan_Sarandon_2005.jpg

If it's the same woman, how did she go from a much thinner, more aquiline nose as a young woman to someone whose nose got a lot pointier? The second photo almost looks like she has a fake nose on.

The rest, I'm not sure of - needs more examining for sure .

Mask, I will think about doing that - thanks for the encouragement! Although I probably should have posted that last bit in your "Use and Abuse of Celebrities" thread.

I have tales from a lot of film sets and TV sets to share. Plus a lot of stories about actors and performers and sad things that happened to them.

Maybe we could start a thread for people who make it to this forum who have firsthand observations of celebrities (from meeting them or seeing them in concert) and who also have experience working in show business? Because I think that might be useful and it would also be a good place to share some of my firsthand experiences in the meantime.

And then if others come along with these types of experiences they can contribute there. Even if you've just seen a celebrity in concert, and you suspect a replacement, you could write about that in that thread. Or if you had a run in with a celebrity in another setting like a book signing or whatever, that could go in the thread. Remember the person who reported Debbie Reynolds acting all zombied out at a book signing? Those types of stories would be great there, too. The idea would be to post anomalous things that aren't quite RIGHT about celebrities that tie in to the idea of replacements, clones, etc.

I remember you had a poster here a while back who had some firsthand observations from film sets - I think he wrote about seeing Brad Pitt act like a zombie? And he and posters like him could chime in there, too. What do you think?

Help me come up with a good title for the thread! Something like "Inside Peek at Celebrities and Show Business?" I dunno, help me brainstorm! [2010] Close Encounters with Celebrities & Show Business by 'feliciag'