The Hunger Games actress hasn’t let attention go to her head.
Many things have changed about Jennifer Lawrence since the first time I met her.
That initial encounter was at the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival, where an unknown 19-year-old pitched up to promote Winter’s Bone, her debut leading role.
Over a couple of cups of tea she displayed a wicked sense of humour and talked excitedly about the movie business. I wrote a feature saying the world had found its next star.
Jennifer’s performance in Winter’s Bone earned her an Oscar nomination and announced to all what I already knew. Roles in X-Men: First Class, The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, which gave her an Oscar win earlier this year, have massively increased her profile.
Now you can’t get in the same room as Jennifer without submitting to a character assessment from a team of publicists, but when I eventually got to meet her on Monday ahead of the premiere of Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire, I was relieved to discover fame had not altered her too much.
“You have to make adjustments,” said Jennifer. “I have a bubble of people around me, people I’ve worked with for years, my friends, family, and they haven’t changed, so nothing in my immediate life has really changed that much. My family play a very important role in keeping me grounded.
“But everything outside that changes, even the way people look at you. But I’ve nothing to complain about. There are good and bad parts to it but there are with every job.”
Written by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games books are a science-fiction trilogy aimed at young adults which have surpassed Harry Potter as Amazon’s all-time top seller.
Set in an alternative future, described by some as how the world might look if the Nazis had won the war, they follow 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (played by Lawrence). She is selected for the 74th Hunger Games, an annual competition held by the totalitarian Panem regime which requires all 12 “Districts” under their command to enter two teenagers, “tributes”, in a gladiatorial contest which only one will survive.
The multi-layered story has been labelled as being everything from anti-war to anti-religious but has filled a gap in the market for those too old for Harry Potter and turned off by the twee romance of Twilight.
“When we find Katniss at the beginning of Catching Fire she’s won the Hunger Games and is living in Victor Village back in District 12,” explained Jennifer of her character’s journey this time around.
“She feels like a stranger because now she’s famous and people treat her differently.
“She’s also suffering post-traumatic stress from the Games and is confused by her feelings for Gale (played by Liam Hemsworth, brother of Thor star Chris) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). Then she finds she’s got to go back for a special 75th anniversary Games.”
Part of Jennifer’s charm is her scatty nature, which gives her a down-to-earth quality not always apparent in some of Hollywood’s polished, image-conscious stars. Our meeting, and her appearance at the London premiere, almost never happened because she forgot her passport and was forced to catch a later flight. She also famously fell when walking up the stairs to collect her Oscar and there were reports last week she’d now misplaced her Best Actress statuette.
“It’s not lost, my mum stole it,” she said. “I put the Oscar in a closet with my other awards (she also won a Golden Globe for Silver Linings Playbook) because it made me feel weird to have people over and have it there saying, ‘Look what I did!’
“But my mum saw it and said it was disrespectful so she took it. Now it’s on display in my parents’ home in Kentucky. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in but they move it when I come to town.”
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is at cinemas from today.
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