Sarah Williams is a fictional character and the protagonist of the 1986 musical fantasy film Labyrinth. Portrayed by Jennifer Connelly, Sarah is an imaginative teenager who wishes for the goblins from her favourite story to take away her baby brother Toby. When her inadvertent wish comes true, she must solve an enormous otherworldly labyrinth in thirteen hours and rescue Toby from the castle of Jareth, the Goblin King.
Created by director Jim Henson and writer Dennis Lee, the character was developed by a number of colleagues including screenwriters Laura Phillips and Elaine May as well as executive producer George Lucas. Sarah is Labyrinth'''s central character, in whose imagination the film's fantasy settings and characters exist, based on the books, posters and toys in her bedroom. Elements of her adventure were inspired by fairy tales and classical stories, as well as fantasy literature such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz.
Reception to the character upon the film's release was mixed, although Sarah has grown in the esteem of critics in recent decades. Reviewers were divided over her initial petulant attitude, with some regarding her as unsympathetic, while others have found her to be an identifiable teenage protagonist because of her flaws. The character's intelligence and perseverance have also received praise. Connelly's role as Sarah brought her international fame and has remained one of the actress's best known performances.
Development Concept and writing Labyrinth started as a collaboration between director Jim Henson and conceptual designer Brian Froud following their previous collaboration, The Dark Crystal (1982). In making Labyrinth, Henson wanted to create a film that combined elements of fairy tales and classical stories in a script that would appeal to a modern audience. According to Froud, he and Henson decided to have human characters as the lead roles to make Labyrinth "more accessible and immediate" than The Dark Crystal, which had featured only puppets. Henson explained that they structured Labyrinth "in a way that the human is really carrying the whole picture" and acts as a "bridge" between the fantastical puppets and the audience. Froud had the initial idea of a journey through a labyrinth, and the protagonist was, at different stages of development, going to be a boy, a king whose baby had been put under an enchantment, a princess from a fantasy world, and a young girl from Victorian England. According to Henson, the decision to have the lead character be a girl was made "because so many adventure films feature boys. We just wanted to even the balance." To make the film more commercial, they made Sarah a teenager from contemporary 1980s America. Henson stated:
According to co-writer Dennis Lee, he and Henson defined two main characteristics for Sarah as being "spunky, feisty, high-spirited" and "very volatile – poised on the brink of womanhood, and capable of trying out very different versions of whom she might be". Henson also wanted her to be initially spoiled and petulant to allow for her character to grow out of these flaws over the course of the film. Acknowledging that the character cannot experience every aspect of maturity in the course of an evening or an hour-and-a-half movie, Henson said that the film concentrates most of all on Sarah learning to take responsibility for her life as well as for her baby brother she is supervising. According to Henson's eldest daughter Lisa, Sarah's personality was partly modelled on Henson's second-eldest daughter, Cheryl, who had been "very romantic in her outlook" and passionate about fantasy and theatre as a teenager. Cheryl, who was a puppeteer on Labyrinth, admitted that she had inspired some aspects of the character, such as Sarah being "a little selfish, a little too smart for her own good", and her desire to escape to a strange world. Jim Henson was living with his three daughters while making Labyrinth, all of whom he had witnessed going through the same period of their lives as the teenaged Sarah, which according to Cheryl was significant to "the level of honesty" in the character's depiction.
Between the more than twenty-five iterations of the Labyrinth screenplay, the character was continually tweaked to create a lead role that audiences would find sympathetic and be able to relate to. Henson hired Fraggle Rock writer Laura Phillips to rewrite primary screenwriter Terry Jones' script, providing more insight into Sarah's inner life and personal interests. To further develop Sarah's character, Henson sought input from executive producer George Lucas, writer Elaine May and numerous colleagues. Lucas advised the structure of Sarah's journey based on his knowledge of mythological motifs and the work of Joseph Campbell. May's contributions "humaniz[ed] the characters", and made Sarah "a more authentic girl". Early production meetings also gave focus to reflecting Sarah's emotional journey through the film's visuals. Froud had suggested a labyrinth as a setting for the film, partly because he recognised it as symbolic of Sarah's mind due to its resemblance to a brain. According to Lee, the use of graphic artist M. C. Escher's work as basis for one of the set designs (the "Escher" staircase scene) served to create a scene where Sarah is forcibly detached from her previous taken-for-granted assumptions about the reliability of her own senses and her perception of time and space.
The dream world of the Labyrinth created for the film is centered around Sarah, with the influences of the film also being the influences of her mind. Henson stated, "the world that Sarah enters exists in her imagination. The film starts out in her bedroom and you see all the books she's read growing up – The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the works of Maurice Sendak. The world she enters shows elements of all these stories that fascinated her as a girl". Additional titles shown briefly in Sarah's room at the start of the film are Through the Looking-Glass, Grimm's Fairy Tales, a book of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, and Walt Disney's Snow White Annual. The goblins that come to take her brother away, as well as Sarah's monologue that she recites to defeat the Goblin King, are from her favourite story, a play called "The Labyrinth" which she rehearses at the beginning of the film.Sarah. in Sarah's experiences in the Labyrinth are also reflective of the objects shown in her room. Many of the characters she encounters bear a resemblance to her toys, including a statuette of the Goblin King. The Labyrinth itself resembles her maze-puzzle board game. The dress Sarah wears in her ballroom dream adorns a miniature doll on her music box, which also plays the same tune as in her dream. Archived on 5 October 2016. One of the obstacles that Jareth sets on Sarah recalls the "Slashing Machine" record on her shelf, and Sarah's final confrontation with the king takes place in a room that resembles her poster of Escher's Relativity.
Some of Sarah's books and posters were those that had been childhood favourites of Henson's, as well as reflecting his children's interests. Henson said that by "plant[ing] all those things in Sarah's room as what she would dream about" they made the film "a homage to all the things we love."
Casting and filming
For the lead role of Sarah, a progressively maturing character, Henson sought "a girl who looked and could act that kind of dawn-twilight time between childhood and womanhood." 150 girls auditioned for the part in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, with auditions starting in England in April 1984. A "dark and cynical" Helena Bonham Carter read for the role, but was passed over in favor of having Sarah be played by an American actress. Monthly auditions were held in the United States until January 1985. The list of American auditionees included Jane Krakowski, Mary Stuart Masterson, Yasmine Bleeth, Sarah Jessica Parker, Laura San Giacomo, Laura Dern, Ally Sheedy, Maddie Corman, Kerri Green, Lili Taylor, Mia Sara, Marisa Tomei, Molly Ringwald, Trini Alvarado, Tracey Gold, Claudia Wells, Jill Schoelen, and Danielle von Zerneck. Late in the casting process, Krakowski, Sheedy and Corman were considered to be the top candidates. Reading for the part in January 1985, Fourteen-year-old actress Jennifer Connelly "won Jim [Henson] over" and he cast her within a week. Recalling Connelly's audition, Henson said, "She did a terrific line-reading, then an improvisation that sent chills down my back ... she was simply a perfect actress." He felt that Connelly was "exactly right" for the role as she was "just at that point in her life that Sarah was in the picture." Connelly moved to England in February 1985 in advance of Labyrinths rehearsals, and spent seven months between March and September 1985 making the film at Thorn-EMI Elstree Studios in London. She expressed that she had "always been the biggest fan of Sesame Street, so working with Mr. Henson was a dream."
Sarah was Connelly's fourth film role. Discussing her understanding of the part, Connelly said that Labyrinth is "about a sort of awakening ... a young girl growing out of her childhood, who is just now becoming aware of the responsibilities that come with growing up." She explained that Sarah learns "that she can't hold onto her childhood any longer. She has to change, and she must open up to other people and other things." Connelly also related the character's development to her own experience of adolescence, saying that while Sarah's change from child to adult is like an "on-off switch", for herself "It's more of a gradual progression. In some ways, I don't want to grow up, but I've always known it was going to happen. I haven't tried to stop it. In that way, Sarah and I are different."
Connelly enjoyed making Labyrinth, describing the experience as "joyous", "magical", and the film set as being "like a wonderland" for her, although there was "hard work, some real physical work" involved. Sarah is one of the few human characters in Labyrinth, and Connelly initially found it a challenge to interact naturally with the puppets she shared many of her scenes with. Comparing the experience to acting with animals, she found the creatures easy to relate to once she "stopped analyzing" and thought of them as characters instead of puppets. Connelly built a good rapport with Jim Henson, who she felt understood her very well due to him having a daughter the same age as her. She found Henson's direction both creative and receptive to her ideas, saying, "He has a very positive idea of how a scene should be, but if you do something different, he'll say, 'Well, that's not what I had in mind, but I like that, too. Let's go with it. Connelly also enjoyed working alongside her costar David Bowie (Jareth), from whom she learnt "to try many things ... to have fun with [acting], and to get to the point where you know your scene so well, that when you go to the set, you can just run with it, go in all different directions." Henson gave Bowie credit for his support of Connelly, stating, "He was of much assistance to her and helpful in a very human way." Connelly completed most of her scenes in two or three takes, except for very technical scenes or those involving complex puppets. Her most difficult stunt was the "Shaft of Hands" sequence where she descended a 30-foot-high shaft in a body mold attached to a hinged bar, accompanied by a camera mounted on a forty-foot vertical camera track. While Connelly named the ballroom scene as her favourite to film, she said she "had no skill whatsoever" at ballroom dancing, and had to have lessons with the scene's choreographer, Cheryl McFadden. She had a tutor on set so that she could keep up with her schooling while working on the film.
Costume