Jennifer Lawrence on the “mistake” of casting her in ‘The Hunger Games’
Throughout her career, Jennifer Lawrence was never one to shy away from sharing her opinion on her own image. The Academy Award-winning actress remains one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, but its her commitment to self-deprivation that’s made her so beloved in the first place. From accidentally cursing during interviews to infamously taking a few spills on red carpets, Lawrence is the first to admit when she messes up.
In that spirit, Lawrence didn’t think that Lionsgate made the right decision when they cast her in the massively successful film series The Hunger Games. It wasn’t because Lawrence was the wrong choice to play Katniss Everdeen, the film’s protagonist, but rather because Lawrence thought she was going to make a mockery of every promotional appearance she was assigned.
“I am a troll. I hate myself. I think the movie is great, but their biggest mistake was [casting] me,” Lawrence claimed on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2012. “Out of the four premieres, I’ve tripped in two or three of them. Like, massive trips. It’s so scary, and then I end up getting so nervous that I get really hyper. So then I go do interviews, and I’m like, ‘I’m like a Chihuahua. I’m shaking. I’m peeing!’ And then afterwards, I’m like, ‘I just talked about peeing on the red carpet!’”
It wasn’t just her klutzy behaviour that made Lawrence weary of The Hunger Games. When Lawrence sat down with The Ringer’s Bill Simmons for the movie podcast series The Rewatchables, she explained why the turning trends of money of the movie industry toward young adult novels wasn’t to her liking. It wasn’t The Hunger Games series that threw her off, though: it was actually Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.
“I almost didn’t do Hunger Games because Twilight had come out, and that fandom had happened,” Lawrence explained on the podcast. “When I was trying to talk to people about making this decision after Hunger Games got offered to me, it was hard to explain to people this level of fame.”
Lawrence actually revealed that she had auditioned for the film adaptation of Twilight, although she claimed to have been turned down “immediately” from the movie. “My life would’ve been totally different,” Lawrence said. “I mean, the work is still the same because I felt similar when I was doing Hunger Games.
“I have to churn out movies in between so that I’m not only known for this franchise,” she added. “I was still in a franchise, so I was still trying to counteract the franchise-ness, and I would still be doing that if I was in Twilight.”
