Who

Possibly Brooklyn's hottest mom, Jennifer Connelly is best known for her girlhood debut in Labyrinth and her Oscar-winning performance in A Beautiful Mind.

Backstory

Raised in Brooklyn Heights by an antiques-dealer mother and a father who worked in the garment-industry, Connelly started her career as a model. A few minor film roles led to her first significant parts in 1986's cult fantasy flick Labyrinth opposite David Bowie and 1991's The Rocketeer. What followed was a string of unwise career moves: She turned down the role of Veronica Sawyer in Heathers (which made Winona Ryder's career), and appeared in a series of duds during the 90's, seven of which featured her topless or nude. Not surprisingly, Connelly took a break from acting for a spell; she returned to the biz with parts in several independent films, including an intense (and again topless) turn as a junkie in Requiem for a Dream. In 2002, she earned serious cred for A Beautiful Mind, which landed her the 2002 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Recent years have seen Connelly in Dark Water, Little Children, Blood Diamond, and Reservation Road.

Personal

Connelly was once engaged to her co-star in The Rocketeer, Bill Campbell, but they never married. She went on to have a son, Kai, during a relationship with photographer David Dugan. She met British actor Paul Bettany during the filming of A Beautiful Mind; they married in 2003 and have a son together, Stellan. (His namesake is actor Stellan Skarsgård). Previously inhabitants of a nine-bedroom 19th century Park Slope townhouse that they purchased for $3.7 million in 2004, in 2008 they moved to a 4,000-square-foot loft on West Street in Tribeca that they bought for just under $7 million. 

No joke

In the mid-1980s, Connelly recorded a Japanese pop single, "Monologue of Love," entirely in phonetic Japanese, after her agent falsely billed her as semi-fluent.