Although right now in the spotlight for the second instalment of The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence has achieved a lot more than that. Paula Fleri-Soler traces the meteoric rise of this young actress.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continues to set the international box office alight, fuelled in no small part by its lead Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, yet another role that has highlighted the actress’s undeniable raw talent.
It seems a little odd writing a career retrospective about a 23-year-old, yet Lawrence’s rise to the highest echelons of Hollywood has been remarkable to say the least.
At this point in her career, she is an Oscar winner, is the main protagonist of a franchise that has, so far, earned well over a billion dollars and is an exceptionally talented and critically acclaimed actress, as adept at serious drama as she is with comedy.
Lawrence unfailingly brings powerfully honest emotions to her every role – and has had no formal training. And finally, by all accounts, she is a down-to-earth, young woman who seems to take her fame with a pinch of salt and is as content to be part of a large ensemble as she is to carry a film all on her own. Not bad for a person who once thought of becoming a doctor.
The actress was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on August 15, 1990. She caught the acting bug as a child, while active in local theatre. Aged 14, she was on holiday in New York, where a stranger asked to take her picture. Of this event, she told Vanity Fair magazine in a recent interview that “she had no idea this was creepy”! The teenager blithely agreed and gave him her mother’s phone number.
Luckily, this was no predator but a model scout who’d clearly realised he was on to something, and lined up a series of agents to meet her. Insisting that she wanted a career in acting not modelling, Lawrence was soon on a flight to Los Angeles for a screen test. Minor roles in TV and film followed, before she took everyone’s breath away in Winter’s Bone in 2010.
Lawrence’s tough and uncompromising performance in this bleak drama was universally praised by critics and earned her a 2011 Oscar nomination for Best Actress, in addition to earning several other nominations.
Following Winter’s Bone, Lawrence appeared in the severely underrated The Beaver and then moved from drama to action with her role as Raven Darkholme/Mystique in the ensemble X-Men: First Class, the intensity with which she tackles her every role still evident under all that blue make-up.
Lawrence unfailingly brings powerfully honest emotions to her every role
If Winter’s Bone marked her as an actress with intense, dramatic chops, 2012’s The Hunger Games built on her action ones. The first film in the franchise, which she effortlessly carries on her shoulders, displayed the actress’s astonishing athletic prowess. Critically and commercially acclaimed, The Hunger Games finally gave cinema a much-feted female action heroine – while making Lawrence one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation.
While fans sat back to await the second in the Hunger Games series, Lawrence appeared in House at the End of the Street, adding class and gravitas to an otherwise pedestrian horror flick.
Yet, it was her next flick, released at the end of 2012, that really cemented her reputation. Directed by David Russell, The Silver Linings Playbook is a comedy drama, in which Lawrence stars as Tiffany Maxwell, a widow with severe issues who befriends Pat (Bradley Cooper), a man with bipolar disorder. Anyone unfamiliar with the actress would have found it hard to believe Lawrence was only 21 when she made the movie. In fact, Russell was initially concerned that she was too young for the role, yet changed his mind after her audition.
In a CNN interview, the director accurately said of her: “There is a soulfulness that is immediately there. It’s right there in her eyes and in her face and in the way she talks.”
Audiences and critics agreed and Lawrence was yet again at the centre of much acclaim. Up against some stiff competition, Lawrence won the Best Actress Oscar – and the whole world unequivocally fell in love with her when she took an ungainly tumble up the stairs as she went to accept the award.
Lawrence is currently basking in the glow of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’s success. And it looks like the fire will continue to burn bright.
She has clearly put her chameleon-like abilities to good use in her latest role, which reteams her with Bradley Cooper and director Russell in the 1970s-set American Hustle.
Her performance is already winning her accolades – she has just won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Supporting Actress... probably the first of many.