The role Jennifer Lawrence hated playing: “I kind of fucked myself”
Jennifer Lawrence has performed many demanding roles over the years, being pushed to her psychological and physical limits in Mother!, The Hunger Games and every project directed by David O’Russell.
After her breakout role in Winter’s Bone, Lawrence established a global fanbase by portraying Katniss Everdeen in the futuristic film franchise, starring alongside the great Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman. But the actor wasn’t finished there and only expanded on her stardom in the Marvel-produced X-Men franchise, which was only to her dismay after one jarring experience on set.
X-Men: First Class, directed by Matthew Vaughn in 2011, follows a world of mutant humans with special powers, divided into two groups: those that use their powers for evil and those that use their powers for good. The X-Men are the latter, with Lawrence playing a blue-looking person called Mystique, who has the ability to shape-shift and change her molecular makeup to take on the appearance of other living things.
The role required an intense physical transformation for Lawrence, with layers of different blue textures and scales being applied to her skin in an arduous makeup process that took nearly eight hours in the first film. After agreeing to the subsequent films in the franchise, it only dawned on Lawrence that she would have to go through this process again, with hours spent in the costume and makeup department as her entire body is morphed into the mystical mutant.
When asked about her thoughts on returning to the franchise, Lawrence had many conflicting thoughts on reprising this role, saying, “I kinda fucked myself. I love these movies – it’s just the paint”.
After last playing Mystique in X-Men Apocalypse, Lawrence hadn’t planned on returning to the character but was ultimately swayed by director Simon Kinberg to put the costume back on for the 2019 film Dark Phoenix.
When describing the complexities of the costume, Lawrence said, “The guys who made it were like, ‘Well, she’s a girl. She doesn’t go to the bathroom. So, I pee standing up out of a funnel”.
This is understandably very challenging, especially if you have to sit for eight hours straight and have your makeup done. This process was the most time-consuming on the first movie, with the overall physical transformation being reduced to three hours for the second film. But even with a shorter time in the chair, Lawrence was also perturbed by the number of chemicals used in the process, explaining how it didn’t bother her in the earlier movies. Still, she later struggled with this, saying, “Now I’m almost 25 and I’m like, ‘I can’t even pronounce this and that’s going in my nose? I’m breathing that?”
However, Lawrence was ultimately convinced by Kinberg. She agreed to the later instalments of the franchise because of his presence and vision, explaining how she found it easier to connect with her character when returning to the role of Mystique.
Lawrence’s next role will be in Lynne Ramsey’s highly-anticipated Die, My Love, in which she stars alongside Robert Pattinson in the psychological thriller.
