Jennifer Lawrence shot to fame thanks to her Academy Award-nominated performance in 2010's Winter's Bone, and soon landed a key role in 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise, playing shape-shifting mutant Mystique in First Class, Days of Future Past, Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix.
Lawrence amassed a legion of fans, and the geek community initially embraced her take on Raven Darkholm. However, the perception that the actress was "overexposed" in Hollywood soon resulted in some people turning against her, and her candid, often self-deprecating interview style led to accusations that she wasn't exactly being herself.
Whether you happen to feel that these criticisms were valid or not, Lawrence herself has now admitted that she winces at the thought of her old interviews.
“Oh, no. So hyper. So embarrassing,” she said when the subject was brought up during an interview with The New Yorker. “Well, it is, or it was, my genuine personality, but it was also a defense mechanism. And so it was a defense mechanism, to just be, like, ‘I’m not like that! I poop my pants every day!’ … I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying. I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying. Ariana Grande’s impression of me on SNL was spot-on.”
Lawrence went on to say that the constant backlash became “uninhabitable,” adding: “I felt — I didn’t feel, I was, I think — rejected not for my movies, not for my politics, but for me, for my personality."
Lawrence has spoken in the past about needing to take a short hiatus from acting after starring in 16 movies in 6 years, but she is set to return to the screen in Lynne Ramsey's Die My Love, which arrives in theaters on November 7.
The chances of Lawrence appearing in another superhero movie are probably quite slim, but she is set to play the lead in A24's adaptation of Paul B. Rainey’s blackly funny sci-fi tinged 2023 graphic novel, Why Don't You Love Me?
According to a brief logline, Why Don’t You Love Me? "follows a miserable couple, Claire and Mark, struggling through their marriage while feeling like something is not quite right in their reality.”
The comic book's official synopsis should give you a better idea of what to expect.
"Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn’t get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can’t get the kids to school on time. They’ve lost interest in family and order in pizza and Chinese food every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son’s name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds.
Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life? Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: this is not the life they chose.
Why Don’t You Love Me? is a pitch-black comedy about marriage, alcoholism, depression, and mourning lost opportunities. Paul B. Rainey has created a hilariously terrifying alternate reality where confusion and pain might lead people to make bad choices but also eventually freedom… maybe."