‘Acting is stupid” might be the statement least likely to come from an Oscar front-runner. But such is the style — and incredible, hilarious appeal — of 22-year old
Jennifer Lawrence, who seemingly overnight went from Kentucky-bred unknown to two-time Best Actress
Oscar nominee. Her first, in 2011, was for “Winter’s Bone.” This year’s nod is for “Silver Linings Playbook.”
She’s already taken home a Golden Globe for the role, and last night won best female lead at the Independent Spirit Awards.
When Vanity Fair asked how she’d avoid being overwhelmed by her own celebrity, she razzed the question.
“Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky?’ I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.”
Yet Lawrence has been “stupid” like a fox, picking auspicious roles — such as the lead in young-adult box-office smash “The Hunger Games” and a stint as Mystique in “X-Men: First Class” — and hitting every one of them out of the park. As young as she is, she dominates the screen even when she’s alongside veteran actors. In “Silver Linings Playbook,” she’s paired with Bradley Cooper, 38, and goes to the mat, verbally, with Robert De Niro in an epic shouting match.
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What’s her acting secret? Method, Stanislavsky, Meisner? None of the above. She told Entertainment Weekly she’d be a flop on “Inside the Actors Studio” because she has no technique. “Do you know how much that guy [host James Lipton] would hate me?” she said. “ ‘Tell me about your method?’ There is no method! I never know my lines! Please, I’m an animal.”
The naturally blond, statuesque actress has earned equal notoriety for brash, self-deprecating remarks that make talk-show hosts blush. Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan asked her about filming of “Catching Fire,” this fall’s sequel to “The Hunger Games.” Her reply began innocuously:
“There was one place that was sacred rocks. We had these horrible wetsuits on, and my butt started itching . . . so I started rubbing my butt on one of the rocks. You know when [it’s] like nothing can satisfy that itch? And then this huge stone starts tumbling down the hill, and they’re like, ‘It’s her fault! It’s sacred rocks!’ So I might be cursed.”
She confided to British Vogue how she shoots intense scenes with intimidating actors: “Like, it’s just a job, right? And if you can’t say a ‘Who farted?’ joke in an emotional scene . . . I mean, come on! We all fart, right?”
Despite her affinity for fart jokes, Lawrence was just crowned Vanity Fair’s Most Desirable Woman. She also appears in a sophisticated new Christian Dior ad campaign.
So how did this hick from the sticks wind up teetering in stillettos on the red carpet?
Born in 1990, Lawrence was raised in the upscale Indian Hills suburb of Louisville; her mom, Karen, ran Camp Hi Ho, a summer retreat for kids, while dad Gary worked in construction management. Nicknamed “Nitro” by her two older brothers because she was so hyper, she was voted “most talkative” in seventh grade and was a cheerleader for six years.
One of her first roles, her mom told Louisville magazine, was in a church play about the Book of Jonah, in which she played the prostitute Nineveh. “This little extra just took over,” Karen Lawrence said fondly. “She played the best prostitute!”
She performed in local theater, playing Desdemona at age 14. That same year, she persuaded her mother to take her to New York to schmooze talent agents. While sightseeing in Union Square, they stopped to watch break dancers perform. A man asked if he could take Lawrence’s picture — “We didn’t know that was creepy,” Lawrence has said. It turned out he was a legitimate talent scout.
Her mother agreed to move to New York on the condition that Lawrence get her GED with at least a 3.9 GPA, which she did, two years early, allowing her to jump into auditioning with both feet.
Bill Engvall, who cast Lawrence on “The Bill Engvall Show” in 2007, says her realism made her perfect as Lauren, a self-possessed, outgoing teenager. “She just seemed to have ‘it,’ ” he tells The Post. “I was almost a little bit jealous. I wish I was that cool. You knew this girl was destined for bigger things.”
In 2008, she landed two films: “The Burning Plain,” as a younger version of Charlize Theron’s character, and in Lori Petty’s gritty “The Poker House.”
“She played, essentially, me,” says Petty, a director and actress (“Point Break,” “A League of Their Own.”). “We grew up very differently — she rode horses and s – – t, and I was like Section Eight on food stamps — but she was amazing. The camera loves her. I likened it to when I first saw Brad Pitt in a movie.”
Avy Kaufman, a New York casting director who cast Lawrence in 2011’s “The Beaver,” concurs. “She’s got an organic quality,” Kaufman tells The Post. “We believe this is the actual person, we don’t separate it out that she’s an actress.”
Petty also remembers teaching Lawrence to get rough. “Her character was a tomboy who played basketball and threw her bike down,” she says. “Jennifer was more girly. She always wanted to put the bike kickstand down. I’m like, ‘Throw it down!’ ”
In 2010’s “Winter’s Bone,” she harnessed those lessons in scrappiness as Ree, an Ozarks teen taking care of her mother and siblings while searching for her meth-head dad.
Her raw performance backfired in one regard: Hollywood now thought of her as scrappy, not sexy, making it tough to find other roles. So she oiled herself up and shot a provocative swimsuit pictorial for Esquire, then shrugged off complaints.
“That’s what I had to do to keep working,” she bluntly told the LA Times. “Honestly, that photo shoot is what helped me get ‘X-Men,’ ” in which she played the blue and oft-naked Mystique.
Lawrence faced more body criticism when “The Hunger Games” came out, with haters lobbing comments about her “baby fat.” She didn’t bother with a new diet regime.
“In Hollywood, I’m obese,” she told Elle. “I’m never going to starve myself for a part . . . I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner.’ ”
“The Hunger Games” cemented Lawrence’s mainstream appeal and launched a million fan sites. With all the accolades, it stands to reason that she inspires jealousy among peers.
After seeing Lawrence as Katniss, Lindsay Lohan tweeted that she was “genius.” A year later, after Lawrence’s Golden Globes acceptance speech, in which she quoted a line from “First Wives Club” — “I beat Meryl!” — Lohan fired off another tweet: “no 1 should ever mess with a legend, such as Meryl Streep.”
The line referred to a scene in which Bette Midler comforts Goldie Hawn by saying her Oscar is a sign that she was once better than Meryl Streep. Lawrence summed up the moment on David Letterman’s show: “Hey, idiots, it’s from a movie.”
Such is the tenor of Lawrence’s relationship to the fame machine. Even if calculated, it’s a savvy move. Directors know they’ve got a talker when they cast her. (She’s set to co-star with Cooper in two films: a thriller, “Serena,” and “The Ends of the Earth,” about the ’70s Abscam oil sting, directed by “Silver Linings” lenser David O. Russell.)
Lawrence still lives in her parents’ Santa Monica condo, citing poor credit from a long-ago missed bill payment. She drives a white Volkswagon Eos convertible. In her down time, she hangs out with friends such as “X-Men” co-star Zoë Kravitz and she dated British actor Nicholas Hoult, another “X-Men” colleague, but the two recently split.
She seems to be finally easing into the starlet life, having recently been spotted getting into a cab after a night out at the Chateau Marmont.But we’re hoping the crass, off-the-cuff Lawrence will be the one who shows up on the red carpet tonight, looking like a million bucks. And, whether she wins or not, we know what she’ll be doing afterward. As she told Entertainment Weekly, “The first thing [I’ll] do is . . . take my heels off, rub my makeup everywhere, and basically pick up a garbage can and go ‘Rawrrr!’ and dump it over my head.”