Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most universally revered and appreciated celebrities in modern Hollywood, and hers is a name most people know (although some still call her "J-Law"). The ultra-GIF-capable actress has managed to become one of the rare stars who is as popular as she's reckoned, and her dominance of pop culture seemed to come out of nowhere, as she landed franchise after franchise while continuing to do prestigious work. . that earned him all kinds of praise.
However, for all her fame and fortune, Lawrence is also quite humble and down to earth, which makes many fans even more intrigued by the actress. So how did Jennifer Lawrence establish herself as Hollywood's "It" girl so quickly? Let's take a look at how she became such a massive star, and how her rise to the top of it wasn't as sudden as it might seem.
Learning on the job
As smart and articulate as she is, some fans might be surprised to learn that Jennifer Lawrence has very little in the way of a formal education. The actress dropped out of high school at age 14 to pursue her early passion for acting. She revealed in an interview with 60 Minutes that she didn't even get a GED or a high school diploma. "I'm self-taught," she explained. “I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do, and I didn't want anything to get in the way. Even friends, for many years, were not as important to me as my career."
One of the reasons Lawrence made the decision to skip the rest of her studies in favor of her work was that she felt like a fish out of water in the educational world, saying, “I struggled in school. I never felt very smart. When I'm reading a script and I feel like I know exactly what it would look like if someone felt that way, that was a whole part of my brain that I didn't even know existed, something I could trust. And I didn't want to let it go." Fortunately for her, her instinct that she was destined to be an actress turned out to be correct.
An auspicious start
Lawrence earned bragging rights very early in her budding career. She told W magazine that her first audition, which was for a veterinary educational video, resulted in a callback, giving her an extra boost early on. "I didn't work for a long time, but I walked for a long time, 'Well, I got a call for the first thing I auditioned for, so…'" She eventually landed her first role in a 2005 promotional short for MTV's My Super Sweet 16, lo which led her to thank the network when she accepted her first Screen Actors Guild Award, as that role was what earned her a SAG membership card to join the organization.
After MTV's promotion of her, TV concerts began to pour in. She starred in several episodes of shows like Monk and Medium before landing a regular spot in the cast of The Bill Engvall Show. That series ran for three seasons and Lawrence convinced him that she would be a comedy star forever. She told The Hollywood Reporter, "I was totally content when I was on a sitcom because I had a steady paycheck. And I thought, 'Maybe I can find a way to be on sitcoms forever. […] I never dreamed that I could have this kind of career.”
The little indie who could
After landing roles in a number of independent films, Lawrence landed a role in Deborah Granik's Winter Bone. Granik later revealed to The Daily Beast that she cast the then-up-and-coming man for the role because she "has the ability to show different sides, colors, ways of reacting and responding." Although Lawrence is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood, Granik said it was her average appearance in her audition process that intrigued her: "She seemed like a realistic human being. She had no entourage or handlers. And it was very important for everyone to audition without makeup." Granik continued, "The second time I met her, she really communicated very vividly what she wanted for the character, and it was hers."
Theirs was a match made in Hollywood heaven because Lawrence was a revelation in the picture and earned an Academy Award nomination for the role. She told Vanity Fair that she was more disoriented by Oscar's initial buzz than anything else. "It's very strange. I think it's actually so big that it doesn't fit on my head. So it's just bouncing around," she explained. "It's a compliment. People really, really thought I did a good job of saying these things to me. It's very nice and it means a lot; It's a great honor. But I don't think something like that can sink. At least to a young man in his 20s.”
Then came the franchises
Lawrence's low-budget film work would continue with Like Crazy and The Beaver, but she soon tapped into her buzz by venturing into franchise land as Raven/Mystique in X-Men: First Class. Director Matthew Vaughn told GQ that she cast her in the role not only because she was pretty enough to step into the shoes of a former model (note: Rebecca Romijn had previously portrayed her), but because she was fierce. "To be frank, a lot of these kids assume that just having a good set of teeth and teeth, smiling for the camera is enough. I needed someone who could act," she said, adding, "She has a ball game on her." Shortly after, she would land another franchise role that would define her career.
Few book-to-screen adaptations drew as much fan anticipation and cast as Gary Ross' take on Suzanne Collins' mega-successful YA trilogy The Hunger Games, so choosing the right person to become the series' flawed heroine Katniss Everdeen was essential. Ross was intrigued by Lawrence's esteemed work on his first big breakthrough, telling Entertainment Weekly, "I saw Bone of Winter, and I thought she was phenomenally talented and fascinating and amazing and had so much power. And then we had a meeting and I found out that she was a completely convincing and intelligent person. But then he came in and read for me and knocked me out. "Both films would be successful and spawn multiple sequels in which Lawrence would star.
Getting to the silly things
Once Lawrence became Mystique and Katniss, he soon found himself all over the promotional tour circuit, and had everyone in points on a regular basis. Whether it was bombing her co-stars to joke about rashes or calling herself a "troll" by justifying why she doesn't like watching her own movies, she wasn't afraid to let loose and make people laugh, even when His papers were pretty serious business.
She later told Marie Claire (via MTV News) that she didn't want to "constantly be a GIF" as a result of her antics, but couldn't help it for a while there, when she was constantly doing silly things like causing a car accident because she thought she saw Honey Boo. -Boo, losing his mind over the Kardashians and of course constantly falling down on the red carpet. She, too, wasn't afraid to give up the Hollywood starvation diet and openly praise all kinds of junk food at events, not to mention happily waving her fat arm for the cameras. All of this delicious candor made Jennifer Lawrence the rare kind of actress who feels truly relatable to fans, which makes it that much easier to root for her continued success.
Praise today
Some stars might find it difficult to balance the time spent on studio fee with their other passion projects, but Jennifer Lawrence seemed to have no problem navigating from green screen sets with big action sequences back to more intimate productions where she would have to do the heavy lifting. with her dialogue and her ability to move. Shortly after The Hunger Games' release, she appeared in the David O. Russell film Silver Linings Playbook and stunned critics with her game-changing performance as a grieving widow who turns to another troubled soul for her. relieve. The part drastically different than anything fans had seen of her up to that point, and she went through awards season, picking up a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for the film (and falling on the way to pick up her Oscar, of course).
The following year she would be at the center of awards season again after racking up multiple nominations, and another Golden Globe, for her turn as a con artist's tragic and terrible wife in Russell's American Hustle. She was nominated again two years later for her third collaboration with the director, Alegría. Thanks to those last two nods, she twice made history as the youngest actress to receive that many nominations at 22 and 23, respectively.
Using your voice
Lawrence might be a prankster, but he's also not afraid to speak up for causes he cares about. While she often jokes about her weight, she took a more serious tone when she criticized Hollywood's impossible weight standards, revealing that she was once forced to stand naked in line and punished by a producer for her size. her. She also refused to be embarrassed after private photos of her posing nude were hacked and leaked online, insisting to Vanity Fair, "Just because I'm a public figure, just because I'm an actress, doesn't mean I asked for this. It doesn't mean it comes with the territory."
Following the 2014 Sony email leak, which revealed that she had been paid less than her co-stars in American Hustle, Lawrence wrote an op-ed for Lenny Letter in which she blasted Hollywood's gender pay gap. . Since then, she has spoken out about the political climate, engaged in hyperlocal initiatives and gone public with her views on campaign finance issues. She is also a board member of the anti-corruption advocacy group Represent.Us and founded the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation to support youth. In other words, just as Lawrence's name and presence help sell movie tickets, she has also harnessed her influence as an important voice in the public domain.
A timely break
Even Jennifer Lawrence is not infallible. After so many career wins of her own, Lawrence experienced some back-to-back lows, when movies like Passengers and Red Sparrow failed to garner the same kind of buzz as some of her earlier work. So instead of churning out another long list of successful hopefuls, the actress decided to step back for a while and invest her time in other projects.
In early 2018, she announced that she would be taking a year away from the screen scene to devote her time to her political interests. She told Entertainment Tonight, "I'm going to take next year off," revealing, "I'm going to be working with this organization as part of Represent.Us ... trying to get young people involved politically on a local level." She continued: "It has nothing to do with partisans [politics]. … It's just anti-corruption and things that state laws are trying to pass that can help prevent corruption, fix our democracy." Although she continued to line up other projects - including her role as Mystique for Dark Phoenix - perhaps it was a wise decision on her part to avoid any long-term fatigue J-Law fans might have gotten from being at the top of the A-list. for so many years.
