<P> Connelly was born in Cairo, New York, in the Catskill Mountains . She is the daughter of Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Karl Connelly (1941--2008), a clothing manufacturer . Her father was Roman Catholic, and of Irish and Norwegian descent . Connelly's mother was Jewish, and was educated at a yeshiva; all of Connelly's mother's grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Poland and Russia . Connelly was raised primarily in Brooklyn Heights, near the Brooklyn Bridge, where she attended Saint Ann's, a private school specializing in the Arts . Her father suffered from asthma, so the family moved to Woodstock, New York, in 1976 to escape the city smog . Four years later, the family returned to Brooklyn Heights, and Connelly returned to Saint Ann's . </P> <P> When Connelly was 10 years old, an advertising executive friend of her father suggested she audition as a model . Her parents sent a picture of her to the Ford Modeling Agency, which shortly after added her to its roster . Connelly began modeling for print advertisements before moving on to television commercials . In an interview with The Guardian, she revealed that, after having done some modeling, she had no aspirations to become an actress . She appeared on the cover of several issues of Seventeen in 1986 and 1988 . In December 1986, she recorded two pop songs for the Japanese market: "Monologue of Love" and "Message of Love". Connelly sang in phonetic Japanese as she did not speak the language . </P> <P> Her mother started taking her to acting auditions . At once, Connelly was selected for a supporting role as the aspiring dancer and actress Deborah Gelly in Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America . The role required performing a ballet routine . During the audition, Connelly, who had no ballet training, tried to imitate a ballerina . Her performance, and the similarity of her nose to Elizabeth McGovern's, who played the character as an adult, convinced the director to cast her . Connelly described the movie as "an incredibly idyllic introduction to movie - making". While Once Upon a Time in America was being filmed, Connelly made her first television appearance, in the episode "Stranger in Town" of the British series Tales of the Unexpected . </P> <P> Her first leading role was in Italian giallo - director Dario Argento's 1985 film Phenomena, as a girl who uses her psychic powers to communicate with insects, in order to pursue the serial killer of students of the Swiss school where she has just enrolled . She next had the lead in the coming - of - age movie Seven Minutes in Heaven, released the same year . </P>

Who played the sister in home alone 3