With Zack Snyder’s Justice League now available on HBO Max and Nobody arriving in theaters on March 26th, we had the pleasure of having Connie Nielsen on an episode of Collider Ladies Night. There’s a ton of must-discuss titles on her filmography like Best Picture winner, Gladiator, and her DC film franchise debut, Wonder Woman, but there was an especially pivotal credit that came before those that significantly contributed to jumpstarting her career in the US, and it was the 1997 release, The Devil’s Advocate.
The movie stars Keanu Reeves as Kevin Lomax, a hotshot defense attorney working in Florida who’s lured to New York City by John Milton (Al Pacino), the #1 at an extremely wealthy law firm. Swayed by the opulence and extravagance of the operation, Kevin ignores his wife’s (Charlize Theron) warnings that something isn’t right over at the firm, with Kevin risking far more than he knows by following Milton’s orders.
Nielsen made the move to the US in 1996 and while she did get some solid offers right out the gate, she passed until she found the right fit, and that right fit wound up being the role of Christabella in The Devil’s Advocate:
“I just totally loved that script. I loved the deviousness and dark humor. And [director Taylor Hackford] just totally could see what I could do with that role.”
At that point, Nielsen did have a good deal of on-screen experience, but working opposite someone like Al Pacino? Nerves seem inevitable. But it turns out, Pacino himself was the one to put Nielsen at ease. Here’s how she explained it:
“A month and a half after landing in JFK with my son and our cat - whom I forgot at the airport and had to turn back and pick up [laughs] - I am on set just off Fifth Avenue walking into a trailer and as I sit down in the chair I realize that it’s Al Pacino sitting in the chair next to me and he turns to me and I literally start shaking. I’m such a fan and he’s like this icon and the uber priest of freaking method acting and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna die today because they’re gonna realize that I’m awful and I can’t act and I’m not prepared.’ And instead he turns to me and he says, ‘Christabella,’ which is the name of my character, ‘I saw your audition. You are amazing. I can’t wait to do our scene together today.’ And I just perked up and I was just like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna just motherf*cking nail this one!’”
From there, Nielsen hit the set with a boost in confidence courtesy of John Milton himself:
“And so I went up there and I was playing this mysterious super over-confident person, obviously not feeling it, but I went in there with all the mystery in the world and all the over-confidence, and I’m literally standing on this incredible terrace overlooking Fifth Avenue. It’s the $2 million shot of the movie, they have lit up the entire Central Park, we shoot the scene and then I’m told that we can’t use it because the F-stop was too low on the photography.”
Production hiccup aside, Nielsen nails the role role from start to finish, making The Devil’s Advocate one of the first steps taken to putting her on her desired path in Hollywood:
“That was the film that really got the rest rolling. And then came a couple of other films that maybe were sort of part of the thing, but not really - until we got to Gladiator.”
If you’d like to hear more from Nielsen on The Devil’s Advocate, working opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Russell Crowe on Gladiator, watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League evolve and more, you can catch our full Collider Ladies Night conversation below: