Biography
Hailed in Entertainment Weekly's 2000 Hot Issue as a mature female sex symbol, transplanted Dane Connie Nielsen also revealed that she could act in the Best Picture-winning blockbuster
Gladiator (2000).
Raised in Copenhagen, Nielsen trained to be a singer and dancer, as well as an actress. She began performing at age 15, with her mother, in local shows and headed to Paris when she was 18, to pursue her career in earnest. After stints in Italy and South Africa, the multi-lingual Nielsen finally landed in New York; she made her English language film debut as a terrorized passenger in the made-for-TV thriller
Voyage (1993).
Nielsen really began to attract Hollywood's attention, however, with her performance as the sizzlingly seductive, redheaded daughter of Satan (
Al Pacino) in the supernatural potboiler
The Devil's Advocate (1997). Along with smaller roles in the drug addiction drama
Permanent Midnight (1998) and
Wes Anderson's
Rushmore (1998) (as the gorgeous mother of Max's friend Dirk), Nielsen landed her first starring role in 1998, as a planet pioneer who nurses
Kurt Russell back to health in the science fiction actioner
Soldier. Following roles in the low profile thriller
Dark Summer (1999) and the higher profile
Brian De Palma sci-fi saga
Mission to Mars (2000), Nielsen notched a critically acclaimed hit with
Ridley Scott's sword and sandal epic
Gladiator. As the emperor's sister Lucilla, Nielsen got to hold her own against
Joaquin Phoenix's scenery-chewing Commodus while falling in love with and quietly championing
Russell Crowe's steely Maximus, proving that she could do more than just look good in
Gladiator's Roman chic. Moving ever-closer to widespread recognition, Nielsen played a member of a family who attracts a menacing photo clerk (a dark turn by funnyman
Robin Williams) in the taut thriller
One Hour Photo. Alternating between smaller independent films and big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, Nielsen turned up in
Demonlover before turning back to the bright lights of Tinseltown with
Basic and
The Hunted (both 2003). Nielsen has one son. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide