2013 Mar 23

Oscar-winning, blockbuster-fronting Jennifer Lawrence seems to have the odds ever in her favor

Jennifer Lawrence didn’t just win the Oscar for Best Actress last month. She basically won the whole Oscars. (Apologies to Ben Affleck.) She charmed late-night hosts — and Academy voters — with a disarming blend of bawdy humor and compulsive oversharing in the weeks before the ceremony. She rocked the red carpets with a variety of gorgeous gowns. More importantly, she was the only nominee who arrived at the Dolby Theatre currently fronting a $400 million blockbuster franchise. Certainly, she was wonderful and deserving of the Academy Award for her performance as a dispirited young widow in The Silver Linings Playbook, but as she accepted the Oscar, there was also a palpable recognition that she is The Future: a young, beautiful indie-film queen who can also carry and sell an action franchise.

At only 22, with an Oscar and central roles in The Hunger Games and X-Men, Lawrence appears to be the right actress in the right movies at the right time. “Everyone wants to work with her, whether it’s another actor or actress or a director or a studio,” says David Glasser, COO of The Weinstein Company, which distributed Silver Linings. “I think everybody right now wants to find that great Jennifer Lawrence Project.”

After auditioning and losing the role of Twilight’s Bella to Kristen Stewart, the first great Jennifer Lawrence Project was Winter’s Bone, the gritty 2010 indie in which Lawrence played a tough Ozark teen looking after her poverty-stricken younger siblings, no thanks to her MIA dad and mentally ill mom. Appearing in virtually every scene, she dazzled critics and was nominated for her first Oscar. “There was something about her [audition] and the way she was able to convey having the burden of this family on her shoulders. It’s not even something that you can really act,” says Paul Schnee, who along with Kerry Barden, cast that Sundance film. “Knowing the demands of the role, I was [like], ‘This is the girl! This is the girl!’”
Most everyone who has ever worked with Lawrence seems to have a version of that “This is the girl!” moment. When Lionsgate announced plans to adapt Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, Lawrence was an immediate contender for its starring role, in part due to Katniss Everdeen’s similarities to her independent, backwoods character from Winter’s Bone. But Gary Ross (Seabiscuit), who landed the plum assignment to script and direct The Hunger Games, hadn’t yet seen her in that movie. His epiphany came when he spent three days writing voiceover for Jodie Foster’s movie The Beaver, in which Lawrence played Anton Yelchin’s girlfriend.

“Just looking at the film over and over again, I just kept saying, ‘Who’s this actress?’ I just couldn’t believe the talent,” says Ross, who’s called casting Lawrence as Katniss the easiest movie decision he ever made. “It wasn’t even like a casting quote choice. I honestly felt lucky that an actress this good existed at that moment for that film. That’s how I felt. I remember saying to Lionsgate when we were casting, ‘Look, this comes along once every 10 years.’ Someone walks in the door with that kind of massive talent, it knocks you back in your chair.”

Action movies have historically been a man’s world, and Hollywood’s most successful actresses, like Julia Roberts, settled for carving out their dominion in the most lucrative genre available to their gender: romantic comedies. Twenty years ago, even when Jodie Foster stood on a similar pedestal of arthouse and multiplex success right after Silence of the Lambs, you might have been tossed out of the studio suite for pitching a $100 million franchise built around a female protagonist (Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies was among very few exceptions). But there’s been a shift in the culture and hardly anyone blinked in 2010 when Angelina Jolie — already Lara Croft and Mrs. Smith — successfully delivered Salt, an action thriller initially conceived for Tom Cruise.

Today’s action-movie heroines are no longer damsels in distress. They’re tough (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), brave (Brave), and as lethal with a weapon as their male counterparts (Snow White and the Huntsman). When Lawrence was cast as Katniss in 2011, she became the face not only of Collins’ dystopian-future Joan of Arc, but the new face of real girl-power at the box office. Hunger Games opened like a superhero, with a $152.5 million weekend, and went on to gross more than any movie of 2012 except The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.

But Ross wasn’t the first one to leverage Lawrence’s talent for a huge popcorn spectacular. X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn cast her to play a younger version of Mystique, the blue-skinned mutant played by Rebecca Romijn in the original films, for his 2011 preboot. Her supporting character took a backseat to mutant frenemies played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, but the actress made an immediate impression on First Class producer Bryan Singer, who’s directing the sequel, Days of Future Past.

“There was a sequence they were doing with James and Mike, and I noticed that she had no trouble speaking her mind, in a fun way,” laughs Singer. “She and Matthew sort of had a back and forth about what was working and what wasn’t, and it just sort of struck me that of all the actors standing on the platform, she was among the youngest and yet she was able to be the most vocal.”
For anyone’s who’s chuckled through one of Lawrence’s freewheeling, b.s.-free interviews where she jokes about her breasts, pretends to fart, or playfully jousts with Jack Nicholson, such a tale is hardly difficult to imagine. “I don’t think Jennifer is intimidated by anything or anybody,” says Ross. “I’d be amazed if she ever had been. She’s one of the more confident people I’ve ever met in my life, but it’s earned. She has the talent to back it up.”

Source

2013 Feb 28

New Hunger Games: Catching Fire Poster

A new poster from The Victory Tour from Hunger Games: Catching Fire has been released:

2013 Feb 28

Miss Dior Bag

Jen is the new Miss Dior Bag. Here are pictures and video:


2013 Feb 26

Academy Awards Pictures Update

I’ve added hundreds more pictures of Jennifer at the 85th Academy Awards where she won the award for Best Actress for her role in Silver Linings Playbook. Thanks Claudia from HungerGamesFire.com for the help. I’ve divided it into 5 albums:


2013 Feb 26

Academy Awards Interviews (Videos)

Here are some interviews:

2013 Feb 26

Jennifer Lawrence Oscar Top 5 Moments (Video)

This girl is so adorable!

2013 Feb 26

Oscars 2013: Do-over! Jennifer Lawrence tells EW she forgot to thank ..

85th Annual Academy Awards - Show“Best Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence was the talk of the town at Sunday night’s awards after her bumpy walk to the stage and her candid acceptance speech made headlines. But she forgot to thank two people critical to the making of Silver Linings Playbook — director David O. Russell and producer Harvey Weinstein. Below, she shares her thanks to them in a statement released to EW:”

In the whirlwind of last night, I was remiss to thank two incredibly important people to this film and in my life.
David O. Russell: Thank you for the most incredible experience of my life. Thank you for your genius, for your guidance, for teaching me things about myself and nurturing me to be a better actor. You have so much passion and such a bleeding heart, you believe not only in your films but what your films can do for people and that is the most important thing that I have learned from you.
Harvey Weinstein: You championed this movie and its story from early days. Your passion and unyielding support gave this film the opportunity to thrive and touch so many people.
Thank you to both. I will never be able to forgive myself for such a brain fart but I hope that you both can. Obviously it was not on purpose, I couldn’t remember what I had already said and my mind went completely blank–your brain does funny things during the most overwhelming moment of your life!

Source

2013 Feb 25

Academy Awards Pictures Update

I’ve added pictures from the Show and Jen accepting her award for Best Actress. More pictures will be up tomorrow:

  • Events & Appearances > 2013 > 85th Annual Academy Awards – Backstage and Show – February 24 2013


  • 2013 Feb 25

    Jennifer Lawrence Wins Best Actress Oscar For Silver Linings Playbook

    Jennifer won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Silver Linings Playbook! Congratulations!

    2013 Feb 25

    Academy Awards – First Look

    Jennifer is looking gorgeous at the Academy Awards red carpet. Jennifer is nominated for Best Actress for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, here is the first look:

    I’ll be adding more pictures as they come.



    2013 Feb 24

    Jennifer Lawrence is Best Actress by Indepedent Spirit Awards (+Pictures)

    Jen took Best Lead for her performance on Silver Linings Playbook on this year’s Independent Spirit Awards. David Russel also won for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and Best Feature.

    Here are pictures, huge thanks to Claudia from HungerGamesFire.com:

  • 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards – January 23 2013


  • 2013 Feb 24

    The Weinstein Company Academy Award Party Hosted By Chopard – Pictures

    Jen attended The Weinstein Company Academy Award Party, here are pictures:

  • The Weinstein Company Academy Award Party Hosted By Chopard – February 23 2013


  • 2013 Feb 24

    Vanity Fair Campaign Hollywood 2013 – Celebration Of “Silver Linings Playbook” – Pictures

    Pictures from

  • Vanity Fair Campaign Hollywood 2013 – Celebration Of “Silver Linings Playbook” In Support Of The Glenholme School – February 20 2013

  • 2013 Feb 21

    Jennifer nominated for a Saturn Award

    Jennifer is nominated for a Saturn Award, for her role on Hunger Games.

    The Hunger Games is also nominated for Best Science Fiction film,

    Reddick and Blair Brown and Best Network Television for Fringe.

    The Saturn Award is presented by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.

    This year’s 39th Saturn Awards is set to be held on June. I’ll post a date when I have one.

    2013 Feb 16

    The Wrap February 2013 & Total Film March 2013 Scans

    I’ve added scans from the February 11 issue of The Wrap and from March 2013 issue of Total Film. Plus the photoshoot from The Wrap.

  • Magazines > 2013 > The Wrap – February 11 2013
  • Magazines > 2013 > Total Film – April 2013
  • Photoshoots > 2013 > 005 – The Wrap – February 2013