Jennifer Lawrence: “When they cast me in The Hunger Games they asked me ‘How much weight are you going to lose?'”

“How much weight will you lose?“. This was the recurring question that the 32-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, she was asked over and over again, like a mantra, a recurring and haunting question. The Kentucky actress has teamed up with Viola Davis for the format Variety’s Actors on Actors and revealed that that was pretty much the only curiosity everyone had when her casting for the celebrated fantasy/dystopian film series was announced.”Hunger Games“, which made her a real global superstar. Despite the Oscar nomination for “Winter’s BoneLawrence was in fact still a relative newcomer when she was cast in the role of Katniss Everdeen.

“I don’t know if I want all the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can’t because they are not a certain weight.”

Jennifer Lawrence opens up to Viola Davis about the scrutiny over her weight during #TheHungerGames. https://t.co/TqYPwDLCC4 pic.twitter.com/UYNtbWTGuD

— Variety (@Variety) December 7, 2022

“’The Hunger Games’ was a great satisfactionLawrence said of her role. “Those books were huge and I knew the target audience was kids,” she adds. “I remember the main discussions (after the casting) were ‘How much weight are you going to lose?’. Besides the fact that I was young and growing up and couldn’t diet, I don’t want all the girls who play Katniss to feel unable to do it because they don’t have a certain physique. And I can’t allow such an idea to creep into my brain as well.”

For the Academy Award (for best actress ne The positive side) the series “Hunger Games” presented a rare opportunity to make a starring action film a female hero. Many years later, Viola Davis had a similar opportunity with “The Woman King“. “I remember when I was filming Hunger Games, no one had ever put a female lead in an action movie because it wouldn’t work, because we were told that girls and boys can identify with a male protagonist interchangeably, but males cannot identify with a female protagonist,” she said Lawrence. “And it makes me so happy every time I see a movie come out that shatters all these beliefs and proves that it’s just a lie to keep certain people out of the cinema. To keep certain people in the same positions they’ve always been in.”