The icon who left Jennifer Lawrence awestruck: “I just dropped my jaw and cried”
Jennifer Lawrence has enjoyed a spectacular, decorated, and often unlikely rise to Hollywood superstardom. From the leading light in a young adult mega-franchise to a history-making Oscar winner, to an established name who only seems to work when she wants, J-Law has earned her place as movie royalty and all the benefits that come with it.
As well as the slew of famous actors she has shared the screen with, Lawrence has also mingled with big names from other walks of life. Her husband, Cooke Maroney, is an art director who is in charge of the Gladstone Gallery in New York. She also briefly dated Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and is also reportedly pals with Taylor Swift and Adele. When you’ve been in show business since you were a teenager, you tend to accumulate these sorts of relationships.
Another famous face that Katniss Everdeen has become pals with is none other than Sir Paul McCartney. The actor and the former Beatle got to know each other through the most Hollywood set of circumstances possible. Macca saw Lawrence dancing to his song ‘Live and Let Die’ in the movie American Hustle, which prompted him to reach out and compliment her on her moves. “I don’t think I spoke back,” she told Vanity Fair. “I just dropped my jaw and cried.”
The song, which McCartney recorded with his band Wings for the 1973 James Bond movie of the same name, features in a scene where Lawrence’s character Rosalyn Rosenfeld aggressively lip-syncs it to her son Danny. A longer version of the scene that was cut from the film eventually surfaced online. It features Lawrence performing the entire song whilst violently vacuuming, dusting, and performing other bits of housework as a bemused Danny watches on. Honestly, if this scene had been left in the movie, it might have actually won one of the ten Oscars it was nominated for.
A different song that was considered for the scene was the Satana classic Evil Ways, as seen in another outtake from the movie. While it’s undeniably a great song, Live and Let Die was the better choice for two reasons. One, it’s a better-known song, and two, it’s closer in time to 1978, the year in which the movie was set. The Santana version of Evil Ways was released in 1969, which would have made it nearly a decade old in the world of American Hustle.
Lawrence has spoken in the past about her eclectic music taste. “Josh [Hutcherson] introduced me to dubstep, which I hadn’t even heard of before.” she told Spin in 2012. “He started playing Skrillex and Bassnectar. It made my brain short-circuit in this great way. I would’ve never thought that I’d like that, but I loved it.” In that same interview, she revealed that whilst she did like The Beatles as a young woman, she preferred Queen, naming ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ as a former favourite song.
Considering she was just 23 years old when American Hustle came out, getting a compliment from one of the greatest musicians to ever walk the Earth must have meant the world to Lawrence. If she needed any further proof that her star was on the rise, then this should have confirmed that beyond all doubt.
