LA, Dec 24: "Jesus, I think I need a comedy," exclaimed super-serious Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Connelly. The star of new movie drama "House of Sand and Fog," which opens nationwide on Friday after playing in a few cities last week, has vaulted onto Hollywood's A-list of leading ladies in recent years for a series of films exploring dark themes.
Connelly, 33, has played the colleague of a doomed scientist ("Hulk"), wife of a schizophrenic math genius ("Beautiful Mind"), mistress to a tortured painter ("Pollock"), drug addicted girlfriend of a junkie ("Requiem for a Dream") and doomed lover of a politician ("Waking the Dead").
Things don't get much brighter in "Sand and Fog" with her role as Kathy Nicolo, a recovering alcoholic whose home is repossessed by the county for back taxes.
Connelly said she has had enough of tragic heroines, but comedic roles just do not come her way. "It's not like, you know, the hot new comedy comes around and they think of Jennifer Connelly," she joked.

While "Sand and Fog" won't help Connelly build a reputation for leaving audiences laughing, the buzz in Hollywood is that it just might deliver her a second Oscar.
She won her first Academy Award for supporting actress playing Alicia Nash, wife of Nobel laureate John Nash, in 2001's "Beautiful Mind,"

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"It's a bit early, but it's a nice sign people are considering this movie that way. Clearly, you do a film and you hope people like it," she said. "It's a worthwhile film. It's well-executed, and it's really about something."

Bureau Report