Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Variety via YouTube
There’s something about Jennifer Lawrence and her ability to get her otherwise serious co-stars and screen partners to lighten up a bit. She got Brian Tyree Henry talking about Housewives on the press tour for Causeway, and she’s been goofing around with Robert Pattinson during the whole promotional cycle for Die My Love. Paired with Leonardo DiCaprio for Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” Lawrence is on her best (a.k.a. bad) behavior, doing everything in her power to crack DiCaprio’s bronzed façade, and you know what, she gets him. The two do some earnest bonding over being child actors and their mutual love of John Cassavettes and A Woman Under the Influence, but some of the most delightful bits between them occur when Lawrence prods him into laughter. When noting DiCaprio’s amazing chemistry with his One Battle After Another co-star Benicio del Toro, Lawrence wonders aloud whether the two of them ever kissed. (DiCaprio does not laugh.) Later, however, when she asks him who his director “white whale” is, having finally worked with Paul Thomas Anderson, DiCaprio smirks and bobs his head from side-to-side, as if imitating her body language, before answering with a straightforward “I don’t know, really,” though he’s curious about both Damian Chazelle and Michael Mann. It’s a rare moment of silliness from an actor who mostly only indulges that kind of behavior onscreen (like in, say, One Battle After Another).
Seated across from each other, it’s fascinating to see these two compare notes on their journeys. In many ways, they’re both comedic and dramatic foils of one another. In interviews, DiCaprio possesses an aloof distance whereas Lawrence is abrasively casual; onscreen, however, they’re both intense and formidable forces. What’s most entertaining about their conversation is DiCaprio’s genuine interest in how Lawrence works. Even though they’ve worked together before, he seems both in awe and totally baffled by her in a way that is charming. Despite her self-deprecating jokes about her own abilities, he seems to genuinely believe her capable of anything she sets her mind to (something audiences have long known). That she deflects with jokes is classic Lawrence, but it’s twice as fun to see her get DiCaprio in on the laugh too. When she tells him that she once rewatched American Hustle drunk to find out if she was good at acting, he smiles, his eyes sparkling, and tells her (without a hint of laughter), “That is funny.” There’s no question he means it.
