Jennifer Lawrence says her team was hiding good scripts from her
Jennifer Lawrence felt like her career was "hijacked" by bad decision making from representatives
Aux News Jennifer Lawrence
If you think Jennifer Lawrence’s post-Oscars career has been bad, you’re in good company. Jennifer Lawrence herself is open about her disdain for some of the middling entries on her resumé, bemoaning the whirlpool of celebrity that overshadowed the craft of acting. But the string of subpar flicks isn’t her responsibility alone, she says; her representatives were actively keeping her out of the indie film game.
According to a recent New York Times profile, Lawrence’s reps warned her “that her audience wouldn’t understand” films that were “smaller” (like her current movie, Causeway). Further, “I found out that a lot of filmmakers that I really loved and admired had scripts that weren’t even reaching me,” she said.
“Everything was like a rebound effect. I was reacting, rather than just acting,” she says of her career decisions after The Hunger Games series ended, admitting, “I had let myself be hijacked.” But no longer: following the filming of franchise flop X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Lawrence left her agency, CAA, and took control of her own destiny.
This is evident with Causeway, touted as her first return to indies since Winter’s Bone and the first film she’s produced at her new production company, Excellent Cadaver. It’s also evident in the projects she’s decided to drop, like Adam McKay’s Elizabeth Holmes biopic. (“I was like, ‘Yeah, we don’t need to redo that.’ She did it,” Lawrence says of Amanda Seyfried’s Emmy-winning portrayal.) And it’s evident in the projects she’s choosing going forward, like the Lynn Ramsey-directed, Martin Scorsese-produced Die, My Love.
“I always wanted to work with Lynne Ramsay,” Lawrence says (per a follow-up from writer Kyle Buchanan on Twitter). “I feel like I’m in my fangirl phase, and that’s why I’m so grateful for the franchises and all that hard stuff I don’t have to do anymore. The endurance of not having any sort of control over your schedule. Not having a personal life.”
Whereas previously Lawrence felt “cut off from my creativity, my imagination” in her work, downsizing her team and reconnecting to the real world has, in her opinion, improved her skills. She reflects, “I don’t know how I can act when I feel cut off from normal human interaction.” Prepare yourselves for a new era of J-Law.
108 Comments
When did Matthew Perry Week end and Jennifer Lawrence Week begin?
“Wring every possible drop of content out of everything” is the new motto here.
It’s super annoying.
It’s less annoying if you don’t read it.
Slightly, but I still have to sift through the headlines when looking for something I do want to read. Plus I didn’t say the story itself is annoying. What’s annoying is that they take one interview and make a dozen newswires out of it. Just rerun the whole interview in one story if you’re gonna do that.
I thought it was “Wring every possible drop of content out of everything then making it a slideshow.”
Also yes.
Yeah, a couple of days of stories about Matthew Lawrence in-between would have given us a bit less whiplash.
Around the time Matthew Perry revealed he would not, in fact, be there for us.
Could he be any less…there…for…us…?
That didn’t really work, did it?
I hate second gear too.
Is she plugging a book?
It’s kind of pathetic the way they stretch a single New York Times profile into a half dozen posts—but we’re here, aren’t we? We’re reading it. We’re commenting.Maybe it’s time to give The Avocado another look…EDIT: “X-Ray Spex threads will continue until morale improves,” says the-avocado.org. And there’s a great photo of Poly Styrene filling my screen. Hmm.
I want to be a part of Avocado but their site is confusing as fuck. Maybe that’s the point.
I agree, but…that’s kind of how I felt about the AV Club (even in print), back when I first discovered it in an Onion I picked up at the Shakespeare & Co. near NYU (almost a quarter century ago!)—and it was probably a year or two before I “got” it.
You be quiet unless you want Don’t Worry Darling month to come back.
I was scrolling down hoping that nobody else had made that joke so I could.
Damn you.
When did Olivia Wilde year end? I need to know everything about her affair with Herby Stylish or whatever the singer’s name was!
They’ve decided to make it an annual event lasting a whole month; stay tuned for 2023’s JanPughAry!
This week.
They used to leave celebrity gossip to jezebel
Jez is now too busy telling any woman who had sex with an older guy that they’re a grooming victim.
Don’t worry, Jennifer. We’ll always love you, even during your “hanging out with Ravi Shankar” phase.
It’ll be interesting to see what she does, thought it all feels a bit late in the game after she spent ten years cashing in and getting so overexposed that she is now in serious danger of falling to b list status.
I think she can be fine if she makes some good decisions in the next few years. I think she was overexposed for a few years in the mid to late 2010s, but she’s stepped back a bit in recent years and I think that’s let the public miss her a bit. She got married and had a child. I don’t think she’s Katniss Everdeen to the public anymore, and I hope that she can get the kind of interesting work she says she’s looking for. Maybe I think more of her as an actress than you do, but I think she’s weathered the point of overexposure and pulled (at least up to this point) a successful “Hathaway:” backing away and letting the overexposure subside.
I totally ignored all the Hunger Games films when they came out so I only knew her as Mystique. Recently I was like “so many people love these maybe Ill check them out”. The first one is awful. I was full-on surprised.
Eh, she’s 32. It can be a transitional period given how Hollywood treats women traditionally, but in the arc of a career in acting, it’s hardly late in the game.
Well, then they weren’t really on “your” “team”, now were they, Jen?
They were doing the scripts a favor
I’m here for a Lawrenaissance.
I prefer Jennaissance.
I think she’s hoping for more of a Lawreformation.
So the next script she’ll get will be nailed to her agents’ door?
Jenlightenment?
The Jendustrial Revolution.
The Roaring Jenties!
Lili Reinhart?
Lawrestoration
Jeneration Next
I saw Winter’s Bone a few years ago and highly, highly recommend it. If Jennifer Lawrence intends to make more movies like that, I will be ecstatic. I don’t give a hang about comic book movies: so boring, so overdone, yawn…
On the one hand, I do feel like her reps did what they do best (be greedy) and wanted her in bigger pictures so they could get more of a commission. That sucks to be used that way, especially since they were ostensibly working for her. On the other hand, her blaming her agency is a pretty convenient way of saying she was in some crummy movies for a stretch.I am curious which of her films she would have walked away from in order to make this happen, and what projects she would have taken on. A quick look at the past 10 years, she has been in franchises (Hunger Games, Xmen) which I assumed she signed long term contracts for, then worked with Darren Arnofsky, Adam McKay and David O. Russell. Joy was a clunker, but it was her third with Russell so I am assuming there was a solid working relationship there. Passengers I heard was pretty lacking so I could see her wanting to ditch that and Red Sparrow I don’t even remember if I saw. I could see her being bummed about doing the last Xmen movies (they were awful, and her misery came across clearly) but I doubt her contract precluded her from doing anything else especially since she was in DP for like 2 minutes.Full disclosure, and I have posted this somewhere else about her, but I think at one point her relatable demeanor started to come off as a carefully curated image to score Q points. Her blaming her reps for getting bad scripts (“ugh, I know, I didn’t want to be in Dark Phoenix either but I *had* to and no one else was giving me work at the time!”) comes off as more of the same, probably unfairly.
Good reps don’t do this. I worked for a boutique-sized talent management co, later a small agency. We were able to retain a lot of bookable actors because we had an understanding with them, which could be summed up as maybe “one for me, one for my agent.” We had to have actors willing to work, they couldn’t reject every opportunity or it wouldn’t work for us (keeping the lights on for our families). But we understood like, you do 3 soul-crushing commercials and a bunch of bit parts on Castle etc, then you go do that one-person show you’ve been working on. And someone from the office shows up, claps, hugs you, takes pics, tries to use it to pitch you for more meaningful work than bit parts and commercials.The thing is – bigger shops are able to really turn actors’ heads but sometimes you do need an artsier manager or agent, not someone who’s basically a finance douche who just views you as a cash register. If we were hiding anything from people, it was like “Wienerschnitzel wants you to do a commercial for $300, in perpetuity.” We never would’ve hidden like a well-written script from an actor. At least, I would not have.
To be clear, I am agreeing with you – her blaming her reps for holding back scripts is a bit disingenuous and more likely than not an excuse on her part. It’s no different than a director of a crappy movie blaming the studio interference for ruining their surefire critical and commercial hit. Even if it is not true, it’s a believable excuse that is sort of impossible to quantify.
Castle was good in its time.
That wienerschitzel deal sounds sweet though…..
Being fair to Jennifer Lawrence, its possible that the issue was that she did have space in her schedule to do indies but the offers never made it to her, or that she would not have taken certain franchise roles if she had known that she also had offers to do more interesting fare; without a full schedule and her thought processes behind her decisions, its difficult to say whether or not she would have truly been blocked from taking independent stuff with her franchises.I will also say that part of the problem with those franchise movies and scheduling is that its not just that you have to be on set for your scenes, but in many cases you may have literally months of press tours and interviews and social media engagements required as well, and you may have to keep certain times carved out for possible reshoots.That being said, it definitely does feel a bit convenient that the reason she did all of those high-profile, high-paying movies is because she simply did not know she was also being offered the chance to do smaller movies lolI do agree that this feels perhaps a bit calculated, but it hits me less as relatable to the layperson and more an attempt to ingratiate her to a more indie/arthouse sensibility, which her career looks to be pivoting towards. Its a band that is about to change genres saying that actually, they ALWAYS loved their new genre and sound and were part of that crowd, they just weren’t allowed by their label to be their TRUE selves! We aren’t jumping from a sinking ship to the new hotness, we always belonged here and are not sell-outs! I do genuinely think that she probably does prefer being in the more indie/arthouse crowd and probably does belong there, but its a well-worn pivot.
My guess is you answered your own question – I would assume she’d have dropped Dark Phoenix (and probably one or two other X-Men movies) if she could, along with Passengers (which she’s explicitly regretted) and Red Sparrow (the movie that’s not Black Widow and not Salt). Maybe mother! as well, which was so bizarre (allegories without remotely coherent narratives don’t make good movies) but maybe she liked it, I don’t know?And I know that there was a backlash against her, but I can’t figure out why. He personality (kinda normal, not warm and fuzzy but not really a jerk, ordinary woman who happens to be in movies) never really changed as far as I can tell, and it didn’t seem any more affected than the average celebrity. Maybe just because it was different from the average A-list actress it came off as disingenuous?
I liked both Red Sparrow and Passengers, though I admit that Passengers could have used a rewrite and a lot of the reason I liked them is that I’m a fan of Jennifer Lawrence. On paper Joy would have looked like a slam dunk as both of her previous movies with Russell were great. (And for the record, I thought Joy was solid, just sort of unnecessary.) I think her big misstep was the X-Men franchise. She should have passed on it completely, especially since she was taking over a role from another actress. Hunger Games was the only franchise she needed. As always, I’m looking forward to everything she does—she’s a hell of a great actress.
Good post.
I’m also not sure how much we’re supposed to judge Lawrence’s reps for steering her away from movies like Causeways a movie that isn’t being received especially warmly by critics and doesn’t seem likely to resonate with audiences any better. If these movies are meaningful for Lawrence, then good for her — she certainly is successful enough to do what she wants. But it’s not like Lawrence’s own acting choices seem to be generating career success.
People at least say Causeways has good lead performances in it, which might be what she’s interested in for her long-term career.
I mean, it’s not blowing anyone away, but it’s getting the best reviews of her career outside of Winter’s Bone and a couple of the David O. Russell films.
That’s just not correct. Right now, it has a 65 among critics on Metacritic. That’s worse than the score for mother!, X-Men: Days of Future Past, American Hustle, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games, X-Men: First Class, and Winter’s Bone.
Oh, you’re a metacritic guy.
You said the movie is getting “the best reviews of her career.” To actually determine that, you need to get a critical consensus, not just the views of the critics you happen to read. Metacritic is the best place I know to get that consensus. Do you have a better option?
I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “Metacritic is the worst review aggregator, except for all the others.”
And when challenged by Metacritic he did say he shall fight them on the beaches.
Do you have a better option?Yes, but unfortunately it involves reading. If you want to get a sense of how an actor’s performance is being received a numerical average of a third party’s assessment of the entirety of each review the film receives is not a good place to start.
Your wrote, “I mean, it’s not blowing anyone away, but it’s getting the best reviews of her career outside of Winter’s Bone and a couple of the David O. Russell films.” The “it” in that sentence is the movie, not Lawrence’s performance in particular. The aggregate reviews for the movie are a good place to look to understand . . . the aggregate critical consensus for the movie. And the fact is that a bunch of Lawrence movies have been better reviewed than Causeway.Maybe this wasn’t the best time to chide others for not reading.
lol. okay.
Jennifer Lawrence left to her own devices is kind of a douchebag (Chloe Sevigny apparently hates her and says it out loud despite hating absolutely no one, she bragged about peeing on Native peoples’ burial mounds when she was drunk, she told all of her female actresses to lean in while bragging about how much abuse she could take from David O. Russell), so it’s not a surprise that her attempts at being relatable fall flat
She should have just fallen up some stairs again to gain that goodwill back … “Stars .. They’r Just Like Us.”
she straight up said (clickbait from this week) that doing passengers was a mistake.
creating a totally extraneous love triangle for Mystique was pretty lame…not quite as lame as X-Men Last Stand’s killing off of Cyclops in the first five minutes but not much is as lame as that movie
Those David O Russell movies may not exactly have been indies, but they were hardly franchise blockbusters either and definitely offered diminishing returns. I don’t know what her agents kept from her, but for the most part I feel like she’s just chosen some really boring projects.
As if everyone didn’t want to please her and she didn’t make strings of terrible decisions herself. Always good to blame employees to show growth.
Pretty sure they didn’t recommend Mother!, so.Unrelated, someone should do a Top 10 Films With A Title Ending in an Exclamation Point. Airplane!, I Know Where I’m Going!, and Fat Girl (the French title of which ends in an exclamation point), etc.
mother! is so underrated, and has perhaps Lawrence’s best performance so far. “Why are you painting my house?!”As for exclamation points in titles, I can also think of Hello, Dolly!, Star!, I Want to Live!, Aferim!, and two Almodóvar films: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and I’m So Excited! Oh, and Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!, which doubles up on the punctuation!
Hail Caesar! deserves mention even if it’s not exactly a great one.
Yeah I loved Mother! and thought it was some great acting from her
Good performances in an absolute wreck of freshman level Symbolism subtext as text garbage.
¡Three Amigos!
C’mon Ham, you know I don’t speak Spanish.
No it isn’t.
A Talking Cat!?!
Thanks for reminding me we’re still waiting for a second BLAME! movie.
“That Thing You Do!” goes on the list.
It’s probably pretty difficult to hide the script from a client when said client is engaged to the writer/director.
Exactly (were they engaged?); I was more or less coming from an anti-Mother! place, saying that that probably wasn’t one her representation was responsible for.
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!is list-worthy, too.
Top Secret!
Then, He Put on a Sweater!
Of course. The prequel to I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark bar didn’t come out!
Can’t forget Duck, You Sucker! with James Coburn.
You certainly can’t forget it. I’ve never heard of it, but you certainly can’t.
It’s an often overlooked Sergio Leone western, part of his “Once Upon a Time in . . .” series.
Only 2 hours and 37 minutes. Seems short for him.
And it’s evident in the projects she’s choosing going forward, like the Lynn Ramsey-directed, Martin Scorsese-produced Die, My Love. “I always wanted to work with Lynne Ramsay,” Lawrence says (per a follow-up from writer Kyle Buchanan on Twitter).
Jesus Christ. And these are consecutive sentences.
Quit stealing my moves
There are enough errors here to go around.
Could it just be that, you know, while she was a fan of those people they weren’t a fan of her?
She’s only 5’9″ so her staff probably hid the good scripts up on the top shelf that only people more than 6 feet tall can reach.
She also dropped out of middle school to pursue an acting career right? Maybe the good scripts were locked in a safe where to get the combination you had to solve an algebra problem.
I guess some women consider 5’9 tall tho? I have a 5’9 friend who complains about meeting guys on dating apps because all these guys post that they’re 6 feet tall and then shes visibly taller or the same height as them.
Unrelated at one point this dude at work several years younger than me (and a bit shorter than me) was like “you must be like 6’3 because I’m 6 feet tall”…. I’m 5’11. He was convinced he’s 6 feet tall. Convinced.
It also depends on ethnicity. My girlfriend’s 5’8″, but she is from China and back there she was considered a giant and towered over most of the men there.
IIRC 5’9″ is the average height for men (in the US), so, yes, that’s tall for a woman.
Yeah I have a friend who says he is 6 Foot tall when he stands up straight. Well he’s about 5’8 when he doesn’t.
Idk. I have trouble believing Lawrence would let anyone get anything over on her. I can’t count the number of actors featured here lately complaining about the terrible deals/disrespect/lack of gratitude they have suffered – way back then.
You might be thinking of Jessica Chastain.
Good for her.
If you think Jennifer Lawrence’s post-Oscars career has been bad, you’re in good company. So after she won an Oscar she stopped getting work and isn’t still one of the most famous and popular actors in world?
Oh, you mean she made average movies like all other actors?
Yeah, text book definition of bad career that.
A lot of Oscar winners end up doing some shitty movies soon after. It always comes down to their management moving toward projects are willing to pay over projects that are actually good. Considering they work on a percentage of what their clients are paid it makes perfect sense.
Yes, and I know there are actors out there that would literally kill to have “bad careers” like this.
The poor girl. Her agents made her take twenty million dollars for Passengers, a not very good movie. And multiple more millions for X-Men movies which were also not very good… and twenty million more for Red Sparrow.The tragedy.I mean, she has functioning human eyes and the ability to read, yes? Could she not have just said “no” to any of these? (I mean, she was contractually obligated to do x-men, I think, but again, she got millions of dollars to phone in performances in mediocre superhero movies, while sandwiching in some Oscar nom performances…)Her agents got her paid. Big time. Before the age of 35. So now she has the financial freedom to do whatever she wants and pick whatever projects she wants, and to complain about the “not artistically fulfilling” stuff she was, uh, tricked into doing, I guess?
her career went downhill after she stopped sleeping with harvey weinstein for roles and started sleeping with hacks like aronofsky. she needs to find a TALENTED producer to fuck
Un-hunh.
I am so excited about her working with Lynne Ramsay, that sounds like a great combination.The entry on her list that I think is the most embarrassing and hopefully CAA is the most to blame for is Red Sparrow. No matter the origin, the Hollywood intent of this appears clearly to scoop Black Widow…delaying that movie and kind of stealing the part and plus nudity was a bad look. Also: there was a joke that Scientology is an agency but CAA is a religious cult lol, when they put together projects my understanding is that it is often packaged, so screening her from people with other representation increases the bang for CAA’s buck…and now you’re at cross-purposes with your reps. Her “Hunger Games” audience didn’t want to see a Lynne Ramsay movie, but her “Winter’s Bone” audience sure AF does.JLaw is hella talented, I hope she has her britneyssaince…another director I’d love to see her work with is Kelly Reichardt