Jennifer Lawrence on why she “absolutely loves” working with female directors
The Oscar-winner says “It was incredible to not be around toxic masculinity” on the set of her new film Causeway, which was directed by Lila Neugebauer
Aux News Jennifer Lawrence
As one of the youngest Oscar winners for Best Actress, Jennifer Lawrence is already a Hollywood veteran at 32 years old. Unfortunately, that seems to go hand-in-hand with some not-so-great experiences as the industry continues to reckon with #MeToo and labor issues. In The Hollywood Reporter’s new actress roundtable, the American Hustle actor opens up about moving forward from conflict-heavy work environments she’s experienced in the past.
“…it was just so interesting to be on a female-led movie,” Lawrence says of her new film Causeway. “My producing partner and I were the lead producers. We had a female director [Lila Neugebauer]. The schedule made sense. There were no huge fights. If an actor had a personal thing and wanted to leave early, instead of going, ‘Oh! Well, we’d all love to leave early!’ we’d put our heads together and go, ‘OK. How can we figure this out?’ We disagreed, and we listened to each other. Sometimes I was wrong and would learn that I was wrong, and sometimes I was right.”
Lawrence stars in Causeway as Lynsey, a military engineer who returns to her hometown after suffering a brain injury in Afghanistan. The one-time The Hunger Games star launched her production company Excellent Cadaver in 2018 with Justine Ciarrochi, and the A24 release is their first project together.
“It was incredible to not be around toxic masculinity,” Lawrence continues. “To get a little break from it. And it did always just make us laugh about how we ended up with, ‘Women shouldn’t be in roles like this because we’re so emotional.’ I mean, I’ve worked with Bryan Singer. I’ve seen emotional men. I’ve seen the biggest hissy fits thrown on set. [Neugebauer’s] my third female director, and they are the calmest, best decision-makers I’ve ever worked with. I absolutely love working with female directors.”
Singer shepherded the X-Men movie franchise, which Lawrence joined in 2011 in X-Men: First Class. The two worked together in X-Men: Days Of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. Along with numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, the director reportedly had a long history of bad behavior on set, which came to a head when he abandoned the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and was subsequently fired in 2017.
6 Comments
As opposed to saying what? “Man, I loathe dealing with female directors. Give me a man behind a camera any day.”
We really need to leave interviews to the four or five actors who are capable of saying interesting things.
Actors saying interesting things tends to make for some potentially bad PR! It’s much easier to keep it bland and inane.
Yep, if a male actor was talking about how he prefers to work with male directors because they are less toxic than female directors they would get piled on.
But she can say this and it’s fine, and Margot Robbie can say she kissed Brad Pitt without his permission and won’t get called out either. Female privilege at its finest.Do toxic female sets exist? Does Olivia Wilde fucking the lead in her latest movie count? Apparently pissed off Florence Plugh or whatever her name is.
I’m sure there have been toxic female presences on sets too, but you won’t ever hear this discussed because it would be called sexist.
I’m sure David O. Russell was nothing but a level-headed professional when she worked with him.Or at least he learned to stop rolling cameras before calling her a cunt.
Various directors that “just gave their young actress a little sleep help in a pill” and then raped them would like the discussion about male toxicity to stop, so that their next victims won’t be so wary.