"Labyrinth's" Young Lady Lost

Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) takes a trip from boring suburbia to exotic Labyrinth-land.

      While most teenagers enjoy a life of high adventure only in their daydreams, 15-year-old Jennifer Connelly enjoys one whenever she shows up for work. Originally a model, she made her screen debut in Once Upon a Time in America and then took on other roles, including that of a girl who could communicate with insects in Creepers (known abroad as Phenomena). Currently on view in Seven Minutes in Heaven, she soon stars as Sarah, a suburban teenager who enters the fantasy world of Labyrinth.
      Guiding her through the maze were master fantasists George Lucas, as executive producer, and director Jim Henson. "I did meet George, but I didn't get to know him very well. He came every so often, but he was quite shy, I thought," she comments.

	"I did meet George, but I didn't get to know him very well. He came every so often, but he was quite shy, I thought."

      On the other hand, Connelly found Henson more accessible. "Jim is wonderful to work with," she remarks. "I really trusted him and everything he was doing. As a person, he's very gentle; he'll never raise his voice. He's very under control, calm and easy going. I don't think anyone could really dislike him."
      And while Henson was guiding her in front of the camera, others were leading her on new paths behind it." All the people there were so open to teaching me what they did - about the cameras, about the special FX, how they were done. They even let me help them sometimes," she reveals. "If there was an FX scene where they had to have explosives, they let me help rig things - not anything too important but little things."
      Strangely enough, Connelly spent a great deal of time in front of the camera just hanging around. "I did many scenes in harness, very high up - for example, the Shaft of Hands sequence.

...They said, 'Don't you dare touch the back or you won't have any more fingers.' And I said, 'Oh, that's nice.'
	Connelly loses her grip in the Shaft of Hands.

      "I was about 40 feet up and I had to be dropped very quickly - it was a bit frightening. Because there were so many hands, you would think there would be a lot to hold onto. But, at the top, there were all the fake ones, and if you held onto them, they would break off; the real ones were down a bit lower. I couldn't touch the walls, so I couldn't get any support that way. I couldn't touch the back because it had all these hinges, and they said, 'Don't you dare touch the back or you won't have any more fingers.' And I said, 'Oh, that's nice.'
      "It's a very strange feeling when it's up to the special FX guys. You're supported up there, looking down, and you can't hold onto anything, which is kind of scary.
      "I don't know. People think I'm crazy," Jennifer Connelly admits, "but I love doing these kinds of movies. I love heights and doing daring things."

by Daniel Dickholtz STARLOG / June 1986 © 1986 by O'QUINN STUDIOS, INC.
All Labyrinth photos: copyright 1986 TRI-STAR PICTURES.

Article came from Starlog #107.

Courtesy of Luna. You can see this article at her site, Through Dangers Untold.