Jennifer Lawrence rose to main prominence at simply 20 years previous when she was forged because the lead character, Katniss Everdeen, within the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s 2008 e-book, The Starvation Video games.
The primary film opened in 2012 to very large success, and Jen reprised the function in three subsequent movies launched in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Now, greater than a decade after she starred within the first film, Jennifer is reflecting on the challenges that got here with fronting such a beloved franchise.
Sitting down with Viola Davis for Selection’s Actors on Actors sequence, the now 32-year-old mirrored on the pressures that got here with scoring the coveted function.
“The Starvation Video games was an superior duty,” she started. “I imply, these books have been enormous, and I knew that the viewers was youngsters. And there have been so many alternative opinions on what is that this motion determine for youngsters going to appear like.”
With such a concentrate on how Katniss would look on display, Jennifer recalled discussions about her physique, and whether or not it might be vital for her to shed weight to be able to play a personality who had grown up combating hunger.
“The largest dialog, after all — this was pre-MeToo, and I’m a lady — so it was weight. And you realize, ‘How a lot weight are you gonna lose?’ and ‘Effectively, it’s known as The Starvation Video games, you wouldn’t be’— you realize,” she mentioned, implying that her character wanted to be smaller.
However, regardless of dealing with stress from executives to shed weight, Jennifer emphasised that weight-reduction plan merely wasn’t one thing she was prepared to do — if not for her sake, then for the good thing about her younger fanbase.
“Together with me being younger and rising and never in a position to be on a food plan, as a result of, you realize, who needs to be on a food plan? I used to be additionally like, I do not know if I would like the entire ladies who’re going to decorate up as Katniss to really feel like they cannot as a result of they don’t seem to be a sure weight,” she mentioned. “And I am unable to let that seep into my mind both.”
Curiously, this isn’t the primary time Jen has spoken candidly about physique picture in Hollywood.
In late 2013, whereas selling the second Starvation Video games film, Catching Hearth, the actor defined why it was so essential for her to push again in opposition to the societal glorification of thinness.
“We have now the power to regulate this picture that younger ladies are going to be seeing [in The Hunger Games],” she advised the BBC on the time. “Women see sufficient of this physique that they are going to by no means be capable of get hold of, these unrealistic expectations. It’s a tremendous alternative to rid ourselves of that on this business.”
And sadly, as her profession has progressed plainly Jennifer, like a lot of her friends throughout a lot of industries, has continued to be met with poisonous physique picture requirements.
Throughout a 2017 look on the Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, Jennifer revealed that whereas engaged on a film she selected to not title, a lady government recommended that she lose a big quantity of weight inside the house of two weeks, telling her it was vital that she be “skinny-skinny” for the mission.
The chief even recommended that they make use of somebody to reside in her condominium and monitor her consuming habits, with Jen describing the complete expertise as “bullshit.”
After all, she declined to go forward with the unhealthy scheme and seemingly reported the solutions, saying within the interview: “I took care of all the pieces personally alone — and belief me, they have been dealt with.”
