Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence recently sat down with Total Film for an exclusive chat about X-Men: First Class.

Lawrence plays mutant shapeshifter Mystique in Matthew Vaughn’s 60s-set superhero prequel.

“The Mystique we know from the original X-Men is a confident, strong, powerful woman”, she told us.

“But in this film she’s a kind of insecure girl, who’s discovering herself, her sexuality and her opinion of things.”

We’ll also see Mystique stray from Charles Xavier’s flock to join forces with Magneto: “It starts as a little crush [on Magneto] but then I start to like his view of the world.”

Lawrence has also been familiarising herself with Mystique by getting immersed in the character’s comic-book backstory (“I’m still reading it…”) and studying Rebecca Romijn’s performance in the previous X-movies to get the physicality down: “She has a very specific walk!”

Lawrence also trained for two hours a day for five months, before learning that her stunt double would be handling a lot of the rough stuff: “I was like, ‘Grrr!’ But I guess it meant less time wearing the make-up, so I wasn’t too disappointed.”