Jennifer Lawrence Says She “Lost A Sense of Control” After Hunger Games, Oscar Win

Jennifer Lawrence is one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood, thanks in no small part to films like The Hunger Games, but now she’s opening up about how the massive success of that film as well as winning the Oscar for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook not only accelerated her career but made her feel like she’d lost a sense of control as well.

“I think I lost a sense of control,” Lawrence said as part of the London Film Festival’s “Screen Talk” series (via Variety). “Between The Hunger Games coming out and winning the Oscar, I became such a commodity that I felt like every decision was a big, big group decision because I had no idea what a huge movie star does next or what Katniss Everdeen should do after this…  When I reflect now, I think of those following years as just kind of a loss of control and then a reaction to try to get back. I’m so happy that I eventually, finally, in my late 20s kind of just stopped and made some major changes, and I got the voice in my head back. Now, it feels personal to me for the first time in a long time.”

Lawrence went on to star in a number of films, including the X-Men film series films X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix where she played Raven Darkholme/Mystique, reprising the role she played 2011’s X-Men: First Class. She also ended up taking a short break from acting in 2019, returning in 2021 with Don’t Look Up for Netflix. The trailer for her next film, Causeway, was recently released. In that film, Lawrence not only stars but will mark her first producer credit under her production company banner, Excellent Cadaver.

“I was not pumping out the quality that I should have,” Lawrence previously told Vanity Fair of her decision to take the acting hiatus. “I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?’… I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life. Working made me feel like nobody could be mad at me: ‘Okay, I said yes, we’re doing it. Nobody’s mad.’ And then I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence. So that kind of shook me out of thinking that work or your career can bring any kind of peace to your soul.”

Causeway will debut, in theaters and streaming on Apple TV+, on November 4th.