Jennifer Connelly says daughter's health scare gave her a fear of flying, separation anxiety: 'I had a real panic'

Top Gun: Maverick star Jennifer Connelly has revealed how she developed a fear of flying following her daughter's health scare.

The actress, 51, shared how she "struggled with separation" from her youngest child Agnes, now 10, which led to "panic" when finding herself on a plane. Connelly shares Agnes and son Stellan with actor husband Paul Bettany, and is also mother to 24-year-old son Kai.

"My armchair analysis of myself is that we’d had a health scare with our youngest child, Agnes, when she was very little," the Oscar winner told the Sunday Times' Style magazine. "It wound up being nothing, sort of a false alarm, but it was enough to really frighten me. As a result, I struggled with separation."

"I never loved flying, but it got worse the first time I traveled without her," Connelly continued. "That was the first time I had a real panic.

"I always knew it was something I could out-think because I was always better when I was coming home.”

However, Connelly noted that her fear had eased by the time she began filming Top Gun: Maverick, which stars Tom Cruise.

"Fortunately, right before doing this film I was having to commute a lot by plane and I thought, ‘This is just unsustainable, I have to work through this issue,’ so I just kind of found my angle," she shared.

In one scene in the new film, Connelly is a passenger on a motorbike being driven at high speed by co-star Cruise.

She said: "I felt like I was in capable hands, I didn’t worry for a moment about his skill as a motorcycle rider or as a pilot."

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