I beat the bullying bitches... now I steer clear of suck-ups
IN Hollywood’s world of pretentious luvvies and precious A-listers, Jennifer Lawrence is a breath of fresh air.
Whether it’s stacking it at the Oscars, sparking up a dodgy-looking cigarette on holiday, admitting she loves carbs or joking to interviewers about peeing her pants, the 22-year-old beauty couldn’t be more different from her peers.
For while the world has fallen for J-Law, she remains remarkably down to earth.
The Silver Linings Playbook star — who last month became the second youngest winner of the Best Actress Oscar — reckons she is actually very DULL.
She says: “I never play characters that are like me because I’m a boring person. I wouldn’t want to see me in a movie.”
Her legions of fans may disagree, because Jen has proved again and again that she is far from boring.
Her tumble on the way to collect her Oscar, plus her witty acceptance speech, were the highlights of the star-studded evening.
Later she cheekily flashed her middle finger at reporters and joked that she had just “done a shot”.
Jen’s notorious clumsiness — she also split her dress on her way to collect her Screen Actors Guild award in January — can be traced back to her tomboy childhood in Louisville, Kentucky.
She says: “I was having this conversation with a friend who grew up in California, and I was like, ‘You never had any woods, you never dug a hole, or saw a snake, or climbed a tree?’
“She was like, ‘Well, I had the beach,’ and I said, ‘But where did you fall out of trees? Where did you build your forts?’”
This adventurous spirit was one reason Jen took the screen role of Katniss Everdeen in the four-part film series of the Hunger Games trilogy, the second instalment of which will be out later this year.
The first film, released last year, saw Katniss, childhood friend Peeta and 22 other kids fight to the death on a post-apocalyptic reality show.
Unfortunately for Jen’s co-star Josh Hutcherson, who plays Peeta, she once again proved accident-prone during filming.
She recalls: “I actually gave him a concussion but he had to console ME because I was the one who cried.
“We both did stunt training for the movie and I took it a little too far and did a perfect death kick.
“I meant to stop before hitting his temple but he moved — so it was his fault really.
“My foot connected right on his temple. I could not stop crying for three hours.”
While The Hunger Games made Jen a household name, she was already the critics’ darling thanks to her role in 2010’s low-budget thriller Winter’s Bone, which saw her nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
She went one better this year by winning the prize for her portrayal of sex addict Tiffany in rom com Silver Linings Playbook.
Despite her glittering success, Jen claims she never wanted to be an actress — and doesn’t even think she is very talented.
She says: “I thought I was going to be a doctor for a long time, or a teacher for a minute, or a fireman.
“I’m one of the most untalented people. Literally, acting is the only thing I can do — and I don’t know if I really know how to do that.”
By the time she was 14 Jen had given up hope of becoming a teacher or a fireman and persuaded her parents to take her to New York to pursue her acting career.
She was spotted by a talent agent while shooting an H&M ad — and the rest is history.
While she admits her rise to fame was fast, Jen says she couldn’t be happier.
She adds: “When you get a promotion at your job, you don’t go, ‘God, that was too fast, can I stay in the mailroom?’
“You kind of take it thankfully. It was fast, but I’m grateful for it.”
It’s a startling transformation for a girl who was badly bullied in childhood.
Jen says: “I changed schools a lot when I was in elementary school because some girls were mean.
“They were less mean in middle school, because I was doing all right, although this one girl gave me invitations to hand out to her birthday party that I wasn’t invited to.
“But that was fine, I just hocked a loogie on them and threw them in the trash can.”
She adds: “Don’t worry about the bitches — that could be a good motto, because you come across people like that throughout your life.”
In fact Jen says she has found being a young girl in Hollywood challenging — but she protects herself as best she can by choosing her films very carefully.
She adds: “It’s hard for a young woman because typically the roles you’re offered are beautiful and bitchy, ugly and nice or pretty and stupid. I’ve been lucky to stay away from that.”
She has also steered clear of the obsessive dieting and grooming that other young starlets give in to — preferring to stick to her favourite diet of “anything fried and carbs”.
She adds: “I don’t even think you can call it guilty pleasures, the way I’ve been eating lately.
“The other day I had pizza for breakfast, buffalo wings for lunch and pizza for dinner.
“Probably my favourite food is a potato — just a potato, because I like fries, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes.”
Jen is so decidely anti-Hollywood that her favourite ever holiday was hardly the first word in glamour either.
She says: “My best trip was to England, when I stayed in Oxford for four days. I stayed at a hotel which was on a little farm and it was great.
“One day I spent three hours petting a horse — I didn’t even realise it had been that long.”
It is clear that Jen sees herself as an ordinary girl — and admits she still gets starstruck, despite rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.
She says: “It’s ridiculous, because I don’t think of myself as a star. I saw this guy recently who’s not even that famous, he’s just in an ad on TV, and I almost had a heart attack.”
Despite her modesty, Jen has been hailed as a style icon and a sex symbol — although she refuses to admit she is either.
She says: “I have hated shopping my entire life. My mom used to drive me to TK Maxx and I would almost faint out of boredom.
“When I started to become known I would just get given clothes that I didn’t really like, but they were free and I didn’t have to go shopping so I would spend years just wearing clothes I didn’t really like.
“Then recently I bit the bullet and went shopping... and really enjoyed it. I am getting there and now I’m kind of starting to like clothes.
“As for being a sex symbol, I don’t think of myself as sexy and, obviously, it’s not true.
“I’m going to try to push that out of my mind because it makes me queasy.”
Jen recently became the face of fashion house Dior, but jokes that the airbrushed pictures were unrecognisable.
She says: “That doesn’t look like me at all. I love Photoshop more than anything in the world. Of course it’s Photoshop — people don’t look like that.”
Even so, with her million-dollar smile and gorgeous, curvy figure, Jen is not short of admirers.
Although there have been rumours about a secret relationship with Silver Linings co-star Bradley Cooper, she is happily single, having split from British actor Nicholas Hoult — Tony in E4’s Skins — in January.
But the blokes of Britain are in luck — because Jen likes them better than American boys.
She says: “I grew up with brothers so I normally talk to guys like boys talk to boys.
“Guys are guys, but British ones talk differently.
“American guys feel the need to exude so much confidence and British guys tend to do the slumping shoulders and almost stammering kind of attitude, which is a lot more likeable than the ‘I can do everything’ American thing.”
For now though, Jen isn’t looking for love — she’s just concentrating on not letting the adoration of millions go to her head.
She says: “My life isn’t really in Hollywood, so unless I’m working I don’t go to those parties.
“Seeing everybody suck up to you and treating you differently — you just can’t let it affect you.”
The Sun
