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Top Gun: Maverick's Jennifer Connelly Says Tom Cruise Deserves Oscar Nomination: "He's Extraordinary"

Jennifer Connelly said Tom Cruise went above and beyond, as the star and producer, to make sure the Top Gun sequel was such a success. 

Jennifer Connelly believes everything came together on Top Gun: Maverick.

Connelly, 52, who starred in the Top Gun sequel as Penelope Benjamin, the love interest of Tom Cruise's Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, thinks that everybody involved in the film gave their best to make it so successful.

Speaking to IndieWire at the Sundance Film Festival, Connelly said, "I think, honestly, it's a really well-made movie. I think everyone did a really good job. I think Joe Kosinski is a great director. It's a huge undertaking, and I think that it's hard to make that kind of movie well, and I think he did a spectacular job with it.

"With what they accomplished, you can feel that the flying sequences are real. It's a huge achievement and executed so expertly, and I think that's really exciting to see."

She added: "The story is really solid, Tom Cruise is extraordinary. It just really came together, and I think the overall feeling of it is celebratory and uplifting and satisfying."

When asked in a separate interview with Variety about Cruise's prospects of being nominated for an Oscar, Connelly, herself a Best Supporting Actress winner for 2000's A Beautiful Mind, said,  “He does an amazing job in the movie. He’s extraordinary as a person and fantastic as an actor, and I think that he is just perfect. He embodies that character so beautifully, and I think he absolutely deserves it.”

“I think that the film is a really well-made film and it’s really hard to make a film like that,” Connelly continued.

“Also, thinking about Tom’s work, think of the things that he did for that role. Besides all the stuff on the ground and how wonderful he is in those scenes and creating those relationships…I think the relationship he has with Miles’ character is so beautiful and moving. But the work that he did to accomplish those flying sequences, it’s something else.”

Connelly is at Sundance to plug her latest, Bad Behaviour, in which she stars alongside Ben Whislaw.

She plays a former child star whose attempts to find meaning draw her into the orbit of a shady guru (Whishaw) and she praised Australian actress-director Alice Englert (Beautiful Creatures) for creating three-dimensional characters.

Connelly said of her alter ego Lucy: "She's really complicated, you know? She's not all good, she's not all bad, but she does some very, very bad things.

"And I loved that Alice wrote a story that had room for these characters to behave in complicated ways as they parse through their issues.

"I loved that it had a sense of humour, I thought it was very funny. And I loved that at the core, I think she was someone who was looking for enlightenment and looking to transcend the suffering and all the pain."

The nominations for the 95th Academy Awards will be announced on Jan 24, 5.30am PT/9.30pm SG. Top Gun: Maverick is now streaming on HBO Go. — BANG SHOWBIZ

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos

Watch exclusive 8 DAYS interviews on meWATCH and Mediacorp YouTube Channel.

Related topics

Hollywood Jennifer Connelly Tom Cruise Joseph Kosinski Ben Whishaw Alice Englert

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