Theo Wenner for RollingStone.com Jennifer Lawrence on the awning of Rolling Stone. 'Dude!" Says Jennifer Lawrence into her cellphone. "I'm absent as fuck! I've been active about for, like, 10 minutes. Area the hell is this place?" She's searching for a horse stable. We accept affairs to go horseback benumbed in the canyons aloft Malibu, but neither of us can acquisition the place. I acquaint her to cull over and I'll appear acquisition her.
The a lot of accomplished adolescent added in America is dabbling on a ancillary artery in her white Volkswagen, in dejected jeans, a gray T-shirt and artist shades. Her by itself albino hair is pulled aback in a apart ponytail, and her elbows are afraid out the accessible window.
She's acclaimed for amphitheatre accessible adolescent women with wills of steel, as with her Oscar-nominated about-face in Winter's Bone, or as the bow-and-arrow-toting Katniss Everdeen in the just-released Hunger Games. Appropriate now her face says she agency business.
"I accept to pee so bad."
We drive a little added and acquisition the stable, which, it turns out, isn't a stable, just a red-dirt parking lot area a horse bivouac is parked. Lawrence all-overs out of the VW and is off like a flash, active off down the aisle in seek of a bush. Two twentysomething ambler babes in sunglasses and sports bras, SoCal aisle chic, do a bifold yield as she sprints past. Was that . . . ?
Lawrence, 21, has a way of authoritative a aboriginal impression. Woody Harrelson, her Hunger Games co-star, still remembers their aboriginal meeting. "I was on my bus," he says, "and on my bus I accept a yoga swing. Jennifer comes on, and she goes, 'Hi, Woody, I'm J – is that a sex swing?' Her aboriginal book to me."
Josh Hutcherson, aswell from The Hunger Games: "When I got cast, she alleged me up for one of those five-minute 'Excited to plan with you, blah, blah, blah' things. The chat started with her saying, 'Think about a catheter traveling in – ouch!' and afresh turns into a 45-minute bluster about zombies and the apocalypse."
And here's Zoë Kravitz, who appeared with Lawrence in X-Men: Aboriginal Class and who is one of her best friends: "I'd met her a few times, and she was like, 'You should appear over and we'll adhere out.' So I go over to her apartment, and she opens the aperture in a towel. She's like, 'Come in, sorry, you're early, I was about to shower.' And she drops her anhydrate and gets in the shower, and starts atom her legs, actually naked. She was like, 'Are we actuality yet? Is this OK?' And I was like, 'I assumption we're there!'"
Lawrence finishes peeing in almanac time ("I'm the fastest pee-er ever," she says later. "I'm acclaimed for it") and starts branch aback down the trail. She's about had time to button her jeans if the two hikers stop her. "I'm apologetic to bother you," one says. "But could I get your autograph? My niece is 15. It would accomplish her year."
Fifteen-year-old nieces are Lawrence's candied atom appropriate now. The Hunger Games leash is the better boyhood juggernaut aback Twilight, with 24 amateur copies of the books in print. And aback its post-apocalyptic action-packed adulation adventure appeals to boys as abundant as girls, experts are admiration the cine to accomplish about a gajillion dollars, with three sequels already in the works.
Back in the parking lot, we accommodated up with our guide, Jasmin, who introduces us to our mounts for the day. Lawrence gets a white adult alleged Nay-Nay, who Jasmin says had a adornment in HBO's Band of Brothers. "Oh!" Lawrence says, cuddle her on the nose. "You're famous!"
Jasmin easily out accountability waivers – Lawrence puts her mom as her emergency acquaintance – and helmets, and I get a afraid brainy angel of the linchpin of Hollywood's newest billion-dollar authorization aerobatics headfirst into a ravine. But it passes as anon as Lawrence hooks her cossack into the stirrup, and, in one aqueous motion, hops up in the saddle like a pro.
Lawrence's ancestors endemic a horse acreage if she was growing up. Her aboriginal horse was a pony alleged Muffin: "She was cute," Lawrence says, "but she was a beggarly little bitch." Afterwards that she accelerating to a brace of males, Dan and Brumby. "Those two hated anniversary other, but afresh one day there was a big storm and they spent the night awash in the barn together, and al of a sudden they were inseparable. The animal astriction assuredly above over." Endure came Brandy. "So white-trash," Lawrence says. "That was during my tube-top phase."
We alpha up the trail, an 1,800-foot ascend into the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. We ride accomplished oak and willow copse and littoral academician scrub. Lawrence says she doesn't get to ride in L.A. often. "I did ride once, in some arena," she says. I ask what it was like. "It was like a big building," she says with a grin, "with a roof?" We ascend some more. "I can see your horse's ass," she says. "It's sweaty. I can see its bathed ass juice."
She talks a lot about throwing up. Afresh she was aback home in Kentucky and angled a bad flu. "I was throwing up everywhere," she says. She aswell has a active anamnesis of the time she ate some bad salmon. "I threw up for, like, two canicule that time. Now I'm on a apricot vendetta." But she doesn't bandy up from drinking, at atomic not anymore. "I've abstruse my assignment there. Now I stop afore I get blackout. Anyway," she says, "when's the endure time you barfed?"
Bradley Cooper, who afresh accomplished a cine with Lawrence, says she's "the accepting you wish on set with you at 4:00 in the morning if you're accident your mind." "She'll say anything," agrees Hunger Games co-star Lenny Kravitz. "Anything." (He aswell says she insisted on calling him "Mr. Kravitz," because he's Zoë's dad.)
Slow and steady, we wind our way to the top of the canyon. Stretched out afore us is a Cinemascope appearance of the dejected Pacific, with the white mansions of Malibu dotting the cliffs below. We ability a adumbral atom and apathetic the horses to a walk, and abundance starts bistro some grass. "Don't let him do that!" Lawrence says. "It's not acceptable for him – he has a bit in his mouth."
But afresh a few account later, I attending aback and see Nay-Nay angled over, nibbling on some sagebrush. Lawrence is draped over her neck, whispering in her ear.
"OK," she's saying. "Just a little bit."
On a biting morning in January 2011, Lawrence was bubbler tea in the antechamber of a chic Manhattan hotel. She was just canicule abroad from her Oscar nod, but she was added aflame about a book. "I'm account The Hunger Games appropriate now," she said. She couldn't delay to go aback to her allowance and finish. "They're adapting it," she added. "They're gonna alpha auditioning and stuff."
Lawrence had just accustomed from London, area she was filming X-Men: Aboriginal Class. For her role as the sometimes-topless dejected aberrant Mystique, she spent eight hours a day accepting into architecture and two accepting aback out. At the end of the production, she had to action to get the aegis drop aback on her Notting Hill accommodation because she'd angry the bathtub blue.
Not continued afterwards that, she met Hunger Games administrator Gary Ross for the aboriginal time. "She was all dressed up because it was Oscar season," Ross recalls. "She came over to my office, with Styrofoam cups and takeout containers everywhere, dressed to the nines. So abounding girls would be alert with this abstraction of bathrobe up for the ball, but Jen was like, 'Can you accept I gotta put on this dress?'"
He asked how she was administration everything. To be honest, she said, "I feel like a rag doll." She had stylists and architecture humans fussing over her, afraid her in awe-inspiring dresses and afflictive shoes. It was affectionate of perfect, Ross said – because that's actually what it's like for Katniss Everdeen.
Katniss is the charlatan of The Hunger Games – a bullheaded 16-year-old who's baleful with a bow. The book is set in a dystopian approaching America that's been ravaged by apostasy and war, area every year 24 accouchement from about the country are brought to the Capitol to attempt in a absoluteness show. They get adorned makeovers and sit for prime-time interviews. And afresh they're put into an amphitheatre and affected to action to the death.
Katniss was the a lot of approved changeable role in Hollywood aback The Babe With the Dragon Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander. (Lawrence auditioned for that, too; she still has a account of herself in covering and piercings, "fully gothed out," on her iPhone.) But in Ross' mind, "there wasn't abundant antagonism at all. I bethink abrogation our affair adage I'd be abashed if I didn't casting this girl."
Lawrence underwent months of acute training for the part, including bedrock aggressive and hand-to-hand combat. She aswell had an archery coach, a four-time Olympian from Georgia ("that Georgia, not our Georgia") alleged Khatuna. "It's annoying how absolute it had to be," she says. "You'd do one affair wrong, and you'd get whipped." (By the bowstring, not by Khatuna.) But the plan paid off: She says that now out of 10 arrows, she can hit four or 5 bull's-eyes. She still has some arrows in her car. "You wanna go appropriate now?" she jokes. "You wanna get a haystack?"
The shoot lasted four months in the dupe abreast Asheville, North Carolina. It was basically like summer camp: There were antic wars, sleepovers, even a affirm jar for grown-ups who accursed about the little kids. (Ross estimates Lawrence contributed at atomic half. "She's fantastic, but she swears like a sailor.") One night, Lawrence rang in her 21st altogether with the aggregation at a bounded bar; addition night anybody comatose Lenny Kravitz's auberge room. "We were all awash in there, aggravating on Lenny's clothes, accepting a abundant time," Harrelson says. (Meaning his apparel or his absolute clothes? Harrelson: "It's affectionate of harder to distinguish.")
The blur is an allegation of abandon as entertainment, and Lawrence is predictably accomplished in it. "I've formed with some amazing actors," says Ross, "and I've never apparent anyone with added raw talent. There's a backlog of affecting ability in her that's array of stunning. Sometimes I'd say to her, Area did you appear from?' And she'd say, 'You know, I actually don't know.'"
Lawrence was a abruptness from the beginning. "I didn't apprehend why my appellation was Plays With Blaze until I got older," she says. "But my parents played with fire, and they got burned." ("We anticipation we were accomplished accepting kids," her mom admits. "We got rid of the babyish bed and everything.")
She grew up in a nice suburb alfresco Louisville, Kentucky. Her dad, Gary, endemic a application business; her mom, Karen, ran a summer affected alleged Hi-Ho. Jennifer was the aboriginal babe built-in on her dad's ancillary in 50 years, and her parents aloft her just like they had her two earlier brothers. "I didn't wish her to be a diva," Karen Lawrence says. "I didn't apperception if she was girlie, as continued as she was tough." Jennifer was so boxy that in preschool she wasn't accustomed to play with the added girls because she was too rough. "She didn't beggarly to aching them," her mom says. "They were just authoritative cookies, and she capital to play ball."
Lawrence played Softball, acreage hockey and basketball on a boys' aggregation her dad coached. But she was aswell a cheerleader for several years (Kammerer Middle School, go Cubs!). I ask if she remembers any of her cheers. "I do," she says, afresh all-overs her head. "No way."
Come on, just one!
She rolls her eyes and puts her easily on her hips. "Ain't, no, sweat! [clap] This bold ain't over yet! [clap]." She even does the anchor pumps and everything.
When she was nine, Lawrence was in a abbey play based on the Book of Jonah. She played a prostitute from Nineveh and blanket the show. "The added girls just stood there with lipstick on," her mom says, "but she came in accepted her anatomy and arrogant her stuff. Our accompany said, 'We don't apperceive if we should congratulate you or not, because your kid's a abundant prostitute.'"
Lawrence spent a few added years accomplishing abbey plays and academy musicals. Afresh came the adventitious appointment that afflicted everything. If she was 14, she and her mother visited New York for bounce break. They were watching breach dancers in Union Square if a man with a camera approached and told them he was a clay scout, and would they apperception if he took some pictures of Jen. It articulate like something out of SVU – but this time, it happened to be true. Appealing anon Lawrence had an abettor and was accepting alleged for auditions.
For months, Lawrence begged her parents to let her move to New York and accord acting a shot. Finally, they agreed to let her go for six weeks. Her mom had to plan at the summer camp, so her brother Blaine, afresh 19, went with her. Their aboriginal night in the city, they ate at the Applebee's in Times Square. Addition night, Jen alleged from their midtown accommodation to say she'd apparent a rat "as big as Shadow" clamber out of the stove. (Shadow was their cat.) But if she started booking gigs, her mom confused to New York, and six weeks angry into a year.
It was harder at first. "I didn't accept any friends," Lawrence recalls. "I bethink accepting affectionate of lonely." She took classes online in their apartment, and remembers her parents angry a lot. "It ability as able-bodied accept been a altered planet," Karen says. "Our accompany anticipation we were nuts. We anticipation we were nuts. But her brothers told us, 'This is her baseball diamond. You've gotta let her play.'"
"And then," Lawrence says, "the brawl kept rolling." She appointed a Verizon bartering and got to accommodated the "Can you apprehend me now?" guy. ("I was so star-struck.") She played a victim's babe on Algid Case and a academy amulet on Monk. ("I anticipate I was a buck or a cougar. I accept a lot of account for mascots.") She attempt a pilot that never got best up, Not Addition High Academy Show, in which she thinks she played "Girl With the Boobs." ("I had to abrasion a push-up bra. My dad was not excited.") The best adventure is the time she did a photo shoot for Abercrombie & Fitch. "None of my pictures concluded up accepting used," Lawrence says, "and if my dad alleged to ask why, they beatific over the negatives – like, here's why!"
Apparently the columnist had put all the kids on a bank and tossed them a football and told them to go play. "All the added girls are searching cute, clay while amphitheatre football," Lawrence says. "And my face is ablaze red, my adenoids are flared, and I'm mid-leap, about to accouterment this girl, like, 'Rahhrrr!' I'm not even searching at the camera. The added girls were like, 'Get her abroad from me!'"
Lawrence has said that if her parents had accepted she would be successful, they never would accept let her go. "We anticipation she'd go to New York, and they'd say, 'Don't let the aperture hit you on the way out,'" Karen says. "If it wasn't for her abettor actually about asthmatic me, saying, 'You don't understand, I've never apparent a 14-year-old like this,' we ability not accept fabricated it."
Lawrence paid her ante for a while, amphitheatre acknowledging roles in things you've apparently never seen, like a Charlize Theron cine alleged The Burning Plain and a bad TBS ball starring Bill Engvall. (She aswell auditioned for Bella in Twilight and Emma Stone's role in Superbad.) Her advance came with Winter's Bone, a gritty, gothic annihilation adventure set in Ozark meth country, area the men acquaint the women things like, "I said shut up already already, with my mouth." Lawrence starred as a tough-as-nails 17-year-old demography affliction of her little brother and sister. Karen apprehend the book and told her she'd be perfect, but the administrator anticipation she was too pretty. So Lawrence hopped a redeye to New York, absolved 13 blocks in the sleet, and showed up with a aqueous adenoids and hair she hadn't done in a week. She got the part.
She spent a ages filming in Missouri, blind out with a bounded ancestors and acquirements to shoot rifles and chop wood. (Actually, she already knew how to chop wood. "I went through a wood-chopping appearance if I was nine or 10.") She abolished into the role – yellowed teeth, absurd lips, lots of billowing flannel. In one scene, the amateur John Hawkes, who played her alarming uncle Teardrop, had to grab Lawrence by the hair and anchor her throat. "I was consistently afraid about affliction her," he says. "But she told me to accompany it every time." The a lot of talked-about arena was the one area Lawrence actually cut the audacity out of a accumulate for that night's dinner. ("I should say it wasn't real, for PETA," she's said. "But spiral PETA.") "I anticipate she screamed appealing loud if it was done," Hawkes says. "Something like, 'I'll never eat spaghetti again.' I don't apperceive that she's necessarily assured – but she's acceptable at acceptable you."
The cine fabricated Lawrence a sensation, admitting a afraid one. On the morning the Oscar nominations were announced, anyone airtight a photo of her and her ancestors just as her name was accepting read. The attending on her face, she said, was "like I'm accepting beatific off to jail." Zoë Kravitz says she admired affliction her: "'You're up adjoin Natalie Portman, you don't angle a chance.' And she'd go, 'You're right, I don't!'" (Lenny says he did bolt her in the library at his abode in Paris, though, captivation one of his Grammys and giving a convenance accepting speech.)
As it angry out, she didn't angle a chance. (Although, let's be absolute – could Natalie Portman grab a fistful of asleep accumulate and bear a band like "Do you guys wish these absurd or stewed?") But even admitting she didn't win, Lawrence actually fabricated an consequence on the red carpet, in a bombshell-red dress that was half-haute-couture, half-Baywatch. (Her stylist said they were "on a cause to accompany aback nipples.") It was the adverse of Winter's Bone - boastful and sexy. The best allotment was, not 15 account before, Lawrence was up in her auberge room, scarfing down a Philly cheesesteak.
"Jennifer doesn't accept a trace of arrogance," Harrelson says. "She's not aggravating to put on any affectedness or be anyone she's not. She's the absolute deal. She's just this frickin' amazing gal from Kentucky who hit it big."
'Are you hungry?" Lawrence asks. "Be-cause I accept a accomplished burger-fries-Budweiser fantasy traveling on."
We're in Santa Monica now, area Lawrence lives in the aforementioned two-bedroom abode she and her mom acclimated to share. Her mom has confused out, but Lawrence has a lot of sleepovers. "We get actually brainless – like Beavis and Butt-Head level," says Zoé Kravitz. "We'll eat bad aliment and watch bad TV" – like Scare Tactics or Bad Girls Club – "and afresh she'll just lie down on the bed and coil up like a little puppy."
Lawrence brand it here. It's a two-minute drive to Accomplished Foods, a 15-minute bike ride to the beach. "But I should move," she says. "My abode is on the Internet." If she gets aback from cutting her next film, she's cerebration of affairs a house. "And a big dog," she says. "And a shotgun."
We can't acquisition a restaurant that's accessible and confined beer, so we achieve for one with a patio and lemonade. ("If there's one affair humans yield from this article," she says, "it should be the abridgement of abutment for day-drinking in L.A.") She orders a burger, medium-rare, and a baby pot of excellent tea – she feels a algid advancing on, and she doesn't wish to get ailing afore her big columnist tour. "This morning I was like, 'This algid is affectionate of a pussy' – but I anticipate it's accepting worse." She even went so far as to try her first-ever L.A. juice, some affectionate of "spinach-carrot-kale concoction. I took one sip, and anon dumped a agglomeration of amoroso in it."
Later, we pop into a bar beyond the artery for a beer, and Lawrence goes for addition shockingly fast bath break. This one takes beneath than a minute. "I don't do annihilation extra," she says. "No abrasion easily – afterwards peeing? That's a little dramatic." She feels foolishly about this. "I did a science agreement in eighth brand that about shut down my school. I had this approach that hand-washing is overrated. And it was true: The bath aperture had the aforementioned bacilli as the toilet seat, and the bore was the dirtiest allotment – it was dirtier than the toilet handle! It had abominable amounts."
After this, Lawrence has banquet affairs with her boyfriend, 22-year-old English amateur Nicholas Hoult, best accepted in the U.S. for the cine About a Boy. (He played the boy.) They met on the set of X-Men, in which Hoult played Beast. Zoë Kravitz saw it advancing "a mile away. They accompaniment anniversary added in the a lot of amazing way," she says. "She's crazy and impulsive, but he keeps her grounded. And she keeps him on his toes."
Jodie Foster, who directed Lawrence in The Beaver, says the added has been acute about her career. "One of the abundant things about Jen is she's been actual picky," says Foster. "Usually 21-year-olds get a job and al of a sudden they're accomplishing every bad cine – a adventurous comedy, a musical, a adornment in a break-dancing movie. They don't apperceive who they are yet, so they anticipate they can be everything. But she's been actual specific about what she's capital to do."
After The Hunger Games, Lawrence is starring in a aphotic ball alleged Silver Linings Playbook, directed by David O. Russell. She plays Bradley Cooper's adulation interest. "It was a appealing approved role," Cooper says of a allotment whose shortlist included Blake Lively, Kirsten Dunst, Rooney Mara and Anne Hathaway. "I alleged her and we had this wonderful, actually bawdy conversation. I thought, 'Oh, this woman is perfect.'" The two enjoyed alive calm so abundant that they've active up for addition movie. It starts filming in Prague this month. "I already apperceive one chat in Czech," Lawrence says. "Pivo – beer."
Lawrence knows her activity is about to change in a appealing huge way. "I've started to get all-overs lately," she says. "I've started charwoman like a crazy person. I'm just now accepting my aboriginal paparazzi and stuff. The added day, like 25 photos of me and Nick amphitheatre basketball showed up, and I said, 'Jennifer, you've got to alpha putting on architecture afore you go play basketball, because you attending like shit.'" She aswell afresh got approached at an airport by a stalkerish fan who'd apprenticed 300 afar and bought a even admission on the simple achievement he'd run into her. "I apperceive I assume crazy," he told her. "Yeah," she said, "you actually do. But actuality are your pictures."
She'll apparently get blah someday. But for now, she still gets bemused about her adjacency to fame, while not acumen that she's acclaimed herself. Yield Silver Linings. One of her co-stars in the cine was Robert De Niro. On the endure day of filming, she capital to get his autograph for her dad, but she wasn't abiding how to ask. "I was in my trailer, freaking out," she says. "I didn't wish to bug him." She'd been sitting there for a while, annoyed over what to do, if al of a sudden there was a beating at the door. It was De Niro's assistant. "And she was like, 'Would you apperception autographing a brace things for Bob?'"
This adventure is from the April 12th, 2012 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 1154: April 12, 2012
