Jennifer Lawrence Says She Was Asked to Lose Weight for The Hunger Games
Jennifer Lawrence has had some pretty unique milestones in her career thus far, from Award-winning independent fare to massive blockbusters. In a sense, Lawrence's breakout role was as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games franchise, which brought to life the story of Suzanne Collins' absurdly-popular book series. To an extent, portraying Katniss helped Lawrence become a global phenomenon, and in a recent interview with Variety, she shed light on one of the most controversial components of that "awesome responsibility". As she revealed, she was asked to lose weight for the role — which she found problematic, given the impact that Katniss had on younger fans.
"When I was doing X-Men, it's hard to not have that perception of the movie that's like, "Oh, well, it's just one of those." Especially when you're painted blue with scales on your face. If you start thinking, "I look ridiculous, I feel ridiculous," there's nowhere to go," Lawrence explained. "In Hunger Games, it was an awesome responsibility. Those books were huge, and I knew that the audience was children. I remember the biggest conversation was "How much weight are you going to lose?" Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don't know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can't because they're not a certain weight. And I can't let that seep into my brain either."
Why did Jennifer Lawrence take a break from acting?
As Lawrence has explained in recent interviews, she stepped away from screen acting due to her own insecurities, and the feeling that audiences had gotten "sick of her." She has since appeared in Netflix's Don't Look Up, and will star in the Apple TV+ drama Causeway later this year, as well as the Sony comedy No Hard Feelings.
"I was not pumping out the quality that I should have," Lawrence 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."
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