Katniss Everdeen is reigning over the box office for the second week in a row in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2,” but we’re currently most inspired by her real-life counterpart, Jennifer Lawrence — Hollywood’s biggest star and a heroine in her own right.
The Oscar winner revealed last week that she’d “like to direct a comedy.” “I have wanted to direct as long as I’ve wanted to act. I just don’t talk about it because I’d rather just do it,” Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly.
The actress, who is currently writing a comedy with Amy Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele, already has a directing gig booked. She hinted, “I’ve signed on to direct something called ‘Project Delirium’ — it’s based on this article about mental warfare in the ’60s, like an acid experiment gone terribly wrong.”
Lawrence said she wanted to direct since she was 16 “and always thought [she] should start making steps towards that.” She decided to take the plunge because she feels prepared for what’s to come. “If I had tried to do it earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready,” she explained. “Now I actually feel ready.”
Backstage at the Golden Globes in 2014, the “Winter’s Bone” star said, “My passion for directing happened at the same time it did for acting on my first movie. So I would love to direct — but I don’t want to suck.”
Sounds like Lawrence is more confident than she was back in 2014. As she wrote in her passionate essay addressing the pay gap in Hollywood, she’s “over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state [her] opinion and still be likable! Fuck that.” Lawrence is standing by her comments despite some backlash. “Some news show called my essay a ‘bratty display’ and I was like, thank you for proving my point,” Lawrence recounted to EW. “Would you have called a man a brat? I was very clear: My problems are not relatable. This is not about money. I don’t need money, I have plenty of money. I’m already overpaid. What I was trying to write about was how my own mentality was getting in my own way.”
Perhaps Lawrence was inspired by her latest role as real-life inventor and businesswoman Joy Mangano, a consummate boss. Lawrence just screened “Joy,” her newest collaboration with David O. Russell, for critics in LA and NY this weekend and received some of the best (early) notices of her already celebrated career. (Lawrence and Russell’s previous two collaborations, “American Hustle” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” resulted in two Oscar noms for Lawrence and one win.) Lawrence observed that Joy “had a fire and gift that she had buried for 17 years” and called the film a tribute to “women who are the unsung heroes of the households.”
Check out two new TV spots for “Joy” below to see how Lawrence’s character goes from “debt up to [her] eyeballs” to Home Shopping Network mogul.
[via Entertainment Weekly, Variety, Entertainment Weekly and /Film]
