Hollywood Has Nothing But Praise for Jennifer Lawrence

3/26/2013Jennifer LawrenceTheresa

Entertainment Weekly recently published a fantastic article featuring Jennifer Lawrence.  In it they speak with several of the lucky people who have gotten the chance to work with her over the last several years, including Hunger Games Director, Gary Ross.  Each of them share their thoughts on Jennifer’s career and what’s to come for her.

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.”

…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.”

Last April, Fox pushed back its start date for Days of Future Past, sidestepping a scheduling conflict with Catching Fire, which filmed last fall and just wrapped reshoots. Days of Future Past finally gets underway April 14 in Montreal, and Lawrence’s character is expected to play a larger role in the sequel, though Singer says that was always the plan and nothing has been changed plotwise to showcase her presence.

“You have to be careful not to suddenly lean the movie all towards her just for her rise in popularity,” Singer says. “It has to work for the character. She’d be the first person to argue that. It’s an ensemble movie. It’s definitely not suddenly her movie, but she factors in it significantly. She’s going to be more bad-ass in this movie, which will be nice. A lot more bad-ass than Hunger Games. Which will be fun to see, because she’s very feisty, as you may have noticed in Silver Linings.”

“I think she’s one of those actresses that you’re going to absolutely going to look back on,” says Glasser. “It’s like when you look 30 years back at Meryl Streep, you think of Sophie’s Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer. Thirty years from now, you’ll look back and you’ll say Silver Linings and Winter’s Bone. You’ll be having that same conversation about her 30 years from now.””

Head over to EW to read the full article!