(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Mon 3 November 2025 13:30, UK
As an actor, it’s normal to expect some projects to crash and burn. Just ask Jennifer Lawrence.
Lawrence has had an especially unique rise to fame. In the beginning, she endeared herself to audiences because of her relatability and damn-near universal charm. Here was a female newcomer who pulled out all the stops on screen, had a vast emotional range and understanding of the nuances of her own world and characters, and yet went on talk shows and spoke like an actual human being.
As is usually the case with mass audiences and the world of the internet, however, Lawrence soon found herself at the crux of a never-ending kind of backlash. Those who loved how down-to-earth she was soon saw it as an irritating personality trait, a symptom of dated Tumblr-era, pizza-loving tryhards and a sign of someone being someone they’re not just for love and attention.
The kicker, as we now know, is that Lawrence was authentic all along. It’s a sad reality when you look at how someone so well-liked soon became rejected because her personality didn’t fit with what people deemed “cool”, but it’s there, and something that Lawrence is still very much coming to terms with. Recently, after Ariana Grande’s impression of the actor on SNL, Lawrence reflected on her reputation.
“It is, or it was, my genuine personality, but it was also a defence mechanism,” she told The New Yorker. “I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying. I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying. Ariana Grande’s impression of me on SNL was spot-on.”
Lawrence also knows what it’s like to work hard on a movie just for it to flop at the box office. She’s had her successes – The Hunger Games, Silver Linings, X-Men, Passengers – but she’s also had a succession of projects with messages that failed to land among audiences or last beyond their scheduled screen time. One of which was Mother!
One of her most divisive and disturbing films, Mother! was confusing from the get-go, with people in pubs fumbling to describe anything to do with its plot other than the fact that Lawrence appears nude in it. A typical symptom of Lawrence’s warped reputation (through no fault of her own), Mother! Otherwise failed because it was too confusing to follow, with lacklustre twists and turns and one-dimensional characters.
When Lawrence first caught on to it doing badly, she was disheartened, telling Vanity Fair that she was thinking, “Did you guys not get it? I gave my body, Darren gave his fucking heart, he bled for that script, and you don’t get it.”
She went on: “It’s a little sad. And I remember letting it be sad for a couple of days, and then I was like, ‘You know what? This is not where I get my happiness from. I get my happiness from my friends and my house—they’ve brought me so much sanity.’”
Over the years, it’s clear that’s where Lawrence has placed her focus. It’s a sad feature of modern society that we tear female actors down for their personalities, but Lawrence’s answer to that was to find validation elsewhere, and not fall victim to the age-old trap of trying to impress perfect strangers.
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