Jennifer Lawrence reveals reason she lost out on ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ role as Sharon Tate
Jennifer Lawrence has opened up about missing out on playing Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
In the 2019 movie, the role of Tate, who was a model and actor that the Manson family murdered in 1969, instead went to Margot Robbie rather than Lawrence.
During a recent live edition of Josh Horowitz’s podcast, Happy, Sad, Confused, Lawrence explained why she has never worked with Tarantino, revealing that she rejected the opportunity to star in The Hateful Eight, admitting, “I turned it down, which I should not have done.”
Despite her rejection, Lawrence revealed that Tarantino remained interested in working with her for his next project, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. However, it failed to materialise.
Lawrence claimed, “Well, he did and then everybody was like, ‘She’s not pretty enough to play Sharon Tate,’ and then they didn’t.’
She elaborated, “I’m pretty sure it is true. Or it’s that thing where I’ve been telling this story this way for so long that I believe it. No, but I — I’m pretty sure that happened — or, he just never was considering me for the part and the internet just, like, went out of their way to call me ugly.”
Tate’s sister, Debra, was one of the figures that pushed the narrative that Lawrence shouldn’t play the late star, telling TMZ in 2017 that Robbie’s “physical beauty, and the way she even carries herself is similar to that of Sharon”.
Debra also cruelly said Lawrence is “not pretty enough to play Sharon” and admitted, “That’s a horrible thing to say, but you know, I have my standards”.
In 2021, while on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Tarantino explained that he also “investigated the idea of Jennifer Lawrence playing Squeaky” in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but said, “It didn’t work out, but she’s a very nice person and I respect her as an actress.”
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