Our girl J-Law – Academy Award winner, bombshell, former highest paid actress in Hollywood – has a long history of being a surprisingly relatable everywoman, considering she y’know, won an Oscar, and dates handsome, famous people like Nicholas Hoult and Chris Martin.
She’s at the top of our minds atm as the star of the new film Red Sparrow, in a role unlike any she’s played before. She reunites with Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence (no relation) in the smart and sexy spy thriller to portray another badass woman, one that this time uses her brains, body and sheer tenacity to survive. Lawrence is Russian ballerina, Dominika, recruited to become a ‘Sparrow’ – one of a group of secret agents trained to use their sheer sex appeal as a weapon, and a bloody ruthless one at that.
Lawrence always seems to be killing it, making us jealous of her friendships, while being outspoken politically and in reference to the #MeToo movement, even as she suffers her fair share of major dag moments – just like us.
One VERY RECENT example of a major dag moment – you might recall in February on the day of the Superbowl, the lady embarrassed herself by trying, and failing, to lead a plane full of passengers in a rousing chant of “Fly, Eagles, fly,” to support the eventual ~WINNERS~ (ding ding ding) the Philadelphia Eagles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=E6m3OF5DcnE
Good try, Jennifer (would not have been brave enough to live out that pipedream).
But to be more serious, Lawrence has also consistently spoken out about sexism in Hollywood – at the end of last year she spoke about her #MeToo moment at an Elle Women in Hollywood event, describing a horrible experience in casting:
A female producer had me do a nude lineup with about five women who were much, much thinner than me. And we all stood side-by-side with only paste-ons covering our privates. After that degrading and humiliating lineup, the female producer told me I should use the naked photos of myself as inspiration for my diet.
While Lawrence has had negative experiences with nudity – no one could forget the massive invasion of her privacy which was the celebrity nude leaks of 2014 – she bravely took on the role of Dominika in Red Sparrow, fully undressing in a scene at the Sparrow School, the training ground for elite spies to become masters of seduction and manipulation.
Speaking to Total Film, she said that in doing the scene she felt”amazing” and “empowered“:
Nudity by choice is a completely different thing from being violated. This was my choice, and it was for my craft. It’s important to remember that there is a difference.
It was never my choice for the world to see my naked body. I didn’t get to make that decision. In doing this film, in doing this for my art… I really felt, I still feel, empowered. I feel like I took something back that was taken from me.
Earlier this week, Jennifer Lawrence told Entertainment Tonight that she was going to take a year off acting in order to work with non-profit Represent.Us. On their behalf, she advocated for a bipartisan approach to ending political bribery in the US, pointing her finger at corrupt pollies at the Unrig the System Summit at Tulane University in New Orleans in early February:
We all believe that our government, that we pay for with our taxes, should work for us. We have come here from across the country and across the political spectrum. We all have different reasons for being here, and I’ll tell you mine. I was the first girl born in my family in 50 years with two of the kindest, most genuine brothers anyone could hope for. Growing up we fought about everything. We were very different then, and, even today, our political and spiritual beliefs are completely different, but we never stopped loving each other or rooting for each other.
So let my family be an example that we do not need to pick sides. We are experiencing the same thing in this country right now, and it is time to come together across ideologies and across parties. It is time to unite, to fix our democracy. Because regardless of where our politics fall, at the grassroots, the American people don’t deserve to pay taxes for a system that is rigged against them.
And that’s all on top of her warm and loving – and definitely jocular – relationships with her m8s. Like how in the lead-up to Christmas she gifted her good friend Kris Jenner a children’s size Porsche.
Jennifer Lawrence and Kris Jenner’s friendship is the gift that keeps giving.
Speaking of the power of friendship, there was this delightful interview for W with Emma Stone – the new highest paid actress in Hollywood – where Stone and Lawrence made a cardboard elephant and giraffe respectively, and mused on a series of firsts.
“I abandoned all my other relationships when I met you.” #friendgoals.
And that’s before we mention Lawrence’s penchant for working closely with a whole ream of hella talented Aussies: from Joel Edgerton in Red Sparrow, to Liam Hemsworth in the Hunger Games, to Rose Byrne in X-Men(s): First Class and Apocalypse. Rumour even has it that Lawrence and Margot Robbie may set screens alight in a Quentin Tarantino movie about the Manson family. 10/10, would watch.
Her relationship with Hemsworth in particular is another built on laughter: probably because both are entirely unafraid to rag on each other in interviews.
I’ll let Hemsworth telling Seth Meyers that she is “terrible at walking”, speak for itself.
But Lawrence got one back: the entire Hemsworth clan (so including Chris, wow) are “animals“, or so she told Conan O’Brien.
Get yourself your next much-needed dose of Jennifer Lawrence in cinemas from March 1 with Red Sparrow. To psych you up (‘sif you needed psyching), give the trailer a squiz:
DAMN GRRL. See it in cinemas March 1.
