Jennifer Connelly as Naameh in Noah

Why did you say ‘yes’ to this role in Noah?

Well I’d worked with both Darren (Aronofsky, the director) and Russell (Crowe, who plays Noah) before and working with each of them had been very important experiences for me. I’m a fan of both of their work, they are both very talented, and so I was very excited about the opportunity to work with both of them again and to work with both of them together.

Requiem for A Dream (directed by Aronofsky) was pretty early on in my career and it was an opportunity to play a very complex character, the circumstances were very different from my own life, and that opportunity was very exciting for me. And A Beautiful Mind (opposite Crowe, for which she won an Academy Award) was also a wonderful opportunity... it was a great part. I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘If only I could get a part like this...’ and I was lucky enough to get it, and so from the beginning it was clear that it (Noah) was going to be an important experience for me.

Have you all changed a little in your approach to your work since you last collaborated?

The circumstances of this film and the dynamic between our characters is very different than it was in the last film we did together and yet I would say that there was something very familiar about it... about working together again. I love Darren and it was great to come back and work with him again. It was great to see him doing a different kind of film. It was amazing to see him at the helm of this big epic film. I think he really handled it so well. It’s true to the spirit of Noah, but it’s really bold and creative. I love working with Russell too. As an actor, he is so engaged with the material and with the actors that he is working with and it’s very powerful, so it’s really exciting to work with him.

Do you draw on your own experiences as a wife and a mother for a part like this?

Well, I think it’s inevitable that you do. Our circumstances bear no relation to one another, of course. So I’m not trying to do an ‘as if as it was me in that’ circumstance. That said, it’s inevitable, because being a mother is a huge part of what I do and who I am and everything is forged with that love that I have for my children (Jennifer has three children with her actor husband Paul Bettany) and Naameh, in that regard, is the same. She is fiercely protective of her family. So I can draw on the love that I have and the fear of loss I have at a very gut level... and that’s where the emotions come from.

Darren built a lot of sets — you had a real ark for example. How does that help you as an actor?

Having beautiful, amazing sets like that is an enormous help. When I went to see the set, I’d never encountered anything like it. It was better than any natural history museum that I’ve ever been to. I took my kids to the set for a field trip. It was unbelievable.

You were working in some extreme conditions and obviously a lot of rain. Was it a physically demanding shoot?

I think you pretty much sign on for that when you do a movie called Noah... there’s going to be water! We had a lot of different temperatures to contend with. We started working in Iceland for the exteriors and it was summer but I remember one scene we shot and Darren said ‘So Jennifer, when you come out of the tent, you kind of look like you are staggering....’ I said: ‘Darren, I am! It’s so windy, I literally cannot stand up!’ And then we were shooting in the summer on Long Island and the actors were drenched with sweat and it was so hot. So we had a lot of different climate scenarios going on — but always a lot of water!

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