Jennifer Lawrence in Total Film's Future 100 Issue
As Jennifer Lawrence is possibly the most in-demand actress in Hollywood right now, it should come as little surprise that she landed a spot in Total Film’s Future 100: a preview of the hottest incoming movies, stars and trends.
From Total Film Magazine:
It’s probably fair to say that when a young star confronts The Greatest Actor Of His Generation, they’d better be on their game. As Jennifer Lawrence monologues at Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook, the wrinkle of respect on his face tells us she needn’t worry. That ball just shot out the park.
More than just another impressive notch on her CV, David O. Russell’s screwball-er was, from De Niro’s acquiescence to its all-bases appeal, the latest in a run of films to dramatise Lawrence’s appeal. Romantic/raucous, indie/mainstream, quirky/credible: here was a film for all-comers, lead by an actress for all-comers. When Bob muses, “I gotta say, I’m impressed,” he’s only echoing what everyone else is saying: Lawrence is the star of her generation.
“It’s overwhelming, but it’s an honour,” she shrugs of the awards and the acclaim, dressed in a sleek, dark blue trouser suit. “It’s like getting a promotion at your job, but when you get that promotion, you can’t leave your house.” Lawrence laughs, a smoky laugh that belongs to a torch singer in a jazz club. And the pressures that come with having so many young women look up to her? “I’m so happy that I don’t have a secret life because that would be so stressful,” she smiles.
Incredibly, Lawrence’s appeal reaches out to everyone. She’s un-groomed enough for indie cred; winning enough for multi-gender popcorn crowds; a celebrity and sex symbol with substance. Her voice (husky, fast) echoes golden-age screwball stars, which might be one reason why she bagged a Best Actress Oscar at just 22 for, of all things, a romcom. When movies tend to be defined by demographic, Lawrence is everything Kristen Stewart would give her vamp-teeth for: a star capable of uniting film-going’s disparate districts.
You’d call that a lot of weight for young shoulders, if Lawrence’s early films hadn’t shown she could hold her own. Having hit New York in her teens to pursue acting, she followed sitcom The Bill Engvall Show with high-pressure indies. Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain cast her as a rebellious teen, holding firm amid Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron’s star fireworks. In Lori Petty’s The Poker House, she was the oldest of three sisters, suffering abuse while their wasted mum screams off the rails.
Lawrence’s path led to meth country, Missouri, where Debra Granik’s narco-noir Winter’s Bone drew an Oscar nom for her Ree Dolly, a teenager determined to track down her no-good dad. Innocent and bruised, tough and awkward, young and ageless: most actors would strain with such complexities, but Lawrence’s intuitive smarts look no more pre-packaged than Ree’s squirrel meal. Method acting? Lawrence doesn’t even practise her lines.
“I don’t have a way of doing anything, so I mould to whatever the director likes,” she says. “I find that easier to do when I don’t have something set in my mind and I can just show up. Acting is just talking. If I start over-thinking it, then I don’t feel natural.”
It’s as a natural flawed killer that paps and people love her. Snapped smoking a joint (allegedly); weathering wardrobe mishaps; falling up the stairs at the Oscars... Lawrence is loved because she hasn’t undergone PR dilution. Take her explanation for that suggestive photo-shoot in Esquire: “A good business decision,” she called it, brazenly. Career-ism can be a turn-off, but Lawrence makes it seem like a fresh breath of honest air.
She respected the honesty in Jodie Foster, her director on The Beaver, who also stood up to De Niro as a rising star.
“What I like about working with an actress, as a director, is that she’s not afraid of actors,” says Lawrence. “People tip-toe around actors like they’re emotional land mines, which is probably right, but I find that annoying because I want someone to tell me what I’m doing wrong. She was very blunt. She would just be like, ‘Talk louder. Do this.’ I like that a lot.”
In return, Foster praised Lawrence for her care in picking roles. When a franchise came Lawrence’s way, she didn’t dive in recklessly. Kristen Stewart’s post-Twilight time in the pap-light warned her how The Hunger Games might turn out.
“I’ve always had this imaginary future where I would be a soccer mom that drove a mini-van and my kids were normal,” she says. “That didn’t fit with taking on a giant franchise. So, I took three days, and each day was a different answer.”
But she signed on.
“I talked to my mom. I had only done indies before, and she said, ‘Every time people ask you why you don’t do studio movies, you say it’s because you don’t care about the size of the movie, you care about the story and the character. But you’re a hypocrite because you have a story and a character that you love, but you’re not saying yes to it because of the size of it.’ So, I said yes, and I haven’t regretted it.”
Nor should she. Lawrence’s ambivalence about taking the role fleshed out Katniss’ scared but stoic entry in the games: the star/character symmetry sells the film. Bringing indie weight to a blockbuster, Lawrence delivered a very human lead, vulnerable yet capable without being superheroic.
She sort of was a superhero in X-Men: First Class, but Lawrence’s Raven/Mystique faced “relatable” choices. Poised between indie clout and mainstream momentum, Lawrence is nailing her own choices. House At The End Of The Street stumbled, but she hasn’t sold out to mutant bees and blue-skinned mutants:
“I still think of myself as an indie actress,” she says. “The only studio movies I’ve done are X-Men and The Hunger Games. There’s a feeling when you do indies, when you’re on your 20th hour into overtime and everyone else is, and everybody is freezing cold, and the only reason you’re there is because of this passion for this tiny little thing that you believe in. You can’t get that on a studio film.”
Her upcoming slate shows this isn’t hot air. An Oscar-night interview saw her joking about new pals Jack Nicholson and Jennifer Garner: “This is my life now – ‘Hey Jack, hey Jennifer!’,” she quipped, winningly. But she’ll return to hard-scrabble Americana for Scandi-indie auteur Susanne Bier’s Depression-era tale Serena. Currently, she’s shooting con-man drama American Hustle with Playbook director David O. Russell and star Bradley Cooper; Russell may also direct her in oil true-lifer The Ends Of The Earth.
You could call that reunion a cynical no-brain banker post-Oscars, but Russell’s wired instincts seem genuinely simpatico with Lawrence’s flawed-gem energies.
“I remember wrapping Silver Linings and thinking, ‘Oh, god, I blew it!’” she says. “It seemed like a very bizarre person that I had created. I thought it was too much. But then I saw the movie and saw this world that David created, where all the characters were too much, in this beautiful way.”
Meanwhile, we’ll see Lawrence revisiting the plausible heroism of The Hunger Games in Catching Fire, where the pressure of matching the predecessor seems to have caused her no panic. “If possible, there was even less preparation because I was like, ‘I’ve done this before’,” she says. “We had a lot of the same crew. Josh [Hutcherson] and Liam [Hemsworth] were there. Normally, when I do a movie, I’m meeting people for the first time, so it was amazing to be able to have the same group of people. It was so fun.
“And it’s a character that I love, and a story that I’m passionate about, so I haven’t managed to get bored. That’s a pretty hard character to get bored with, though.”
As Team Katniss punches the air in agreement, don’t expect audiences to tire of Lawrence’s world domination in a hurry either.