Oscar Profile #390: Jennifer Lawrence

Born August 15, 1990 in Louisville, Kentucky, Jennifer Lawrence is thus far the only person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.

During her childhood, Lawrence performed in church plays and school musicals. Spotted by a talent scout when she was 14, her family moved to Los Angeles in support of her burgeoning career at the age of 15. Her first major break came when she was cast in the TV sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007-2009) in which she played the eldest child of Engvall and Nancy Travis. She received an even bigger break when she was cast as the lead in Debra Granik’s 2010 film, Winter’s Bone, in which she played a poverty-stricken teenager hunting down her drug-dealing father. The film earned numerous nominations and awards, including the first of four Oscar nominations for Lawrence to date.

In 2011, the actress was cast as the mutant Mystique in X-Men: First Class and has reprised the role in three additional entries in the franchise thus far. The following year, she landed an even bigger role in another science-fiction franchise, The Hunger Games in which she played the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, in four films released to huge box-office returns in four successive years from 2012 through 2015.

2012 also saw Lawrence begin a lucrative working relationship with writer-director David O. Russell and actor Bradley Cooper. That relationship produced three films, all of which earned Lawrence Oscar nominations. She was nominated for Best Actress for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, which she won. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for 2013’s American Hustle, losing to Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave. Back in the Best Actress category for 2015’s Joy, she lost to Brie Larson in Room. Between American Hustle and Joy, she and Cooper appeared in 2014’s Serena, directed by Susanne Bier. That film was not successful.

Lawrence’s win for Best Actress of 2012 followed by a nomination for Best Supporting Actress the following year brought back memories of another Jennifer, Jones, who won a Best Actress Oscar for 1943’s The Song of Bernadette, followed by a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for 1944’s Since You Went Away. In the interim, only Emma Thompson has had that distinction with a win as Best Actress for 1992’s Howards End and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for 1993’s In the Name of the Father, the year she also earned another nomination for Best Actress for The Remains of the Day.

Lawrence has become one of the highest paid actresses of her generation as well as the most popular. By 2014, she was earning $10 million per film. In 2015 and 2016, she was the highest paid bar none. Her 2016 film, Passengers earned Oscar nominations for Production Design and Original Score but failed to earn Lawrence a nod. There was speculation that should would find herself among the nominees again for Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film, Mother!, but that turned out to be a critical and commercial failure. At only 27, Lawrence still seems to have a bright and sunny career ahead of her.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012), directed by Gary Ross

Suzanne Collins’ young adult trilogy of dystopian novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay were turned into four blockbuster films, Mockingjay having been split into two parts, toplining Lawrence as the young heroine, Katniss Evderdeen. The original was released in March of 2012 and the sequels in November 2013, 2014 and 2025, respectively. Joining Lawrence were Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Woody Harreslon, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Goffman, Julianne Moore and Sam Claflin among many others.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012), directed by David O. Russell

Bradley Cooper has the lead in this one as a former mental patient suffering diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Ordered to spend eight months in a mental institution for beating up his wife’s lover, he is released a month early on condition that he live with his parents in their Philadelphia home where they can keep an eye on him. He is introduced to his best friend’s wife’s recently widowed sister (Lawrence) with whom he forms a love-hate relationship. Cooper, Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver as his parents and Lawrence were all nominated for Oscars, with Lawrence emerging as the sole winner among them.

AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013), directed by David O. Russell

Based on a real-life story that took place in 1978, Cooper and Lawrence were reunited under the direction of their Silver Linings Playbook director in this tale of a con man (Christian Bale), his seductive partner (Amy Adams) and a crazed FBI agent (Cooper) who pull a scam on the mayor of Camden, New Jersey (Jeremy Renner). Lawrence plays Bale wife who could be the thread that brings the whole thing down. The film was nominated for a whopping ten Oscars including Bale for Best Actor, Adams for Best Actress, Cooper for Best Supporting Actor and Lawrence for Best Supporting Actress. None of them won.

JOY (2015), directed by David O. Russell

In their third and last film for Russell to date, Lawrence has the starring role of inventor-entrepreneur Joy Mangano while Cooper plays the QVC host who makes a star. Their Silver Linings Playbook co-star plays Lawrence’s father, Virginia Madsen her mother, Diane Ladd her grandmother and Edgar Ramirez her ex-husband. They all take a backseat to Lawrence who holds it altogether with her most charming performance to date. Unlike her first two films under Russell’s direction, this one did not generate a truckload of Oscar nominations, but Lawrence couldn’t be denied, nabbing the film’s only nod.

PASSENGERS (2016), directed by Morten Tyldum

On the heels of his Oscar nomination for directing The Imitation Game, Morton Tydum was given the directorial reins of this science-fiction drama with comic undertones. Chris Pratt co-stars as a traveler on a spaceship to a distant planet, which due to a malfunction, awakens him ninety years too early. With only a robotic bartender (Michel Sheen) for company, he awakens fellow passenger Lawrence, allowing her to believe that she, too, was awakened due to a malfunction. A meteor collision, a major gravity failure and other forms of mayhem ensue, but at it’s heart this is basically romantic comedy-drama well-suited to the two stars.