Jennifer Lawrence is looking back at her early fame with a little cringe.
The Oscar-winning actress opened up about her chaotic press tour era in a new New Yorker profile, admitting that the interviews that once made her Hollywood’s “relatable girl next door” were actually masking something deeper.
“A few years ago, I told Viola Davis, ‘Every time I do an interview, I think, I can’t do this to myself again,’” Jennifer recalled. “I feel like I lose so much control over my craft when I have to do press for a movie.”
She explained that while her offbeat, unfiltered personality was real, it was also a form of self-protection. “Well, it is, or it was, my genuine personality, but it was also a defense mechanism,” she said. “To just be, like, ‘I’m not like that! I poop my pants every day!’”
Jennifer laughed that even she now finds those old clips painful to watch. “I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying,” she admitted. “I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying. Ariana Grande’s impression of me on SNL was spot-on.”
Grande famously mocked Jennifer’s over-the-top relatability in a 2018 Saturday Night Live skit, pretending to eat a full can of Pringles while boasting about being “so quirky.”
Reflecting on that era, Jennifer said her personality may have even cost her roles. “I felt like I was being rejected from roles for my personality,” she confessed.
During the height of her fame, countless viral YouTube compilations highlighted her goofy interviews, Oscars trip and red carpet antics. But now, at 35, the Silver Linings Playbook star is taking a calmer, more self-assured approach to her career.
After taking several years off from acting, Jennifer is back in the spotlight promoting her new movie with Robert Pattinson, Die, My Love. The break, she said, helped her reset after the world—and she herself—grew tired of her image.
“I just think everybody had gotten sick of me,” she told Vanity Fair in 2021. “I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right… I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life. Working made me feel like nobody could be mad at me… And then I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence.”
She added, “That kind of shook me out of thinking that work or your career can bring any kind of peace to your soul.”
