Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence talks about giving up school at the age of 14 to pursue her acting career. The 27-year-old A-list star gives a candid interview to Bill Whitaker in which she says she dropped out of middle school. The interview with Lawrence will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Lawrence says she struggled in school and “never felt very smart.” She began modeling and when she started to read scripts and relate to the characters in them, something clicked. “I know exactly what it would look like if somebody felt that way. That was a whole part of my brain that I didn’t even know existed,” she tells Whitaker. “And I didn’t want to let it go.”
So she gave up on school.
“I dropped out of middle school. I don’t technically have a GED or a diploma. I am self-educated,” she says. Asked by Whitaker if she regrets the decision. “No. I really don’t. I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do and I didn’t want anything getting in the way of it,” she says. “Even friends, for many years, were not as important to me as my career.”
That career is now in full bloom. She has been doing two films a year since the age of 20 and was the youngest actress ever nominated for four Academy Awards. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Tiffany Maxwell in “Silver Linings Playbook.” Now she is cast as a Russian ballerina coerced into becoming a spy in the upcoming “Red Sparrow.”
She tells Whitaker the one thing between her and the new role was the nudity it required. She was reluctant because she had been hacked in 2014 and was devastated when nude photos of her were spread across the internet. “I realized that there was a difference between consent and not and I showed up for the first day and I did it and I felt empowered,” she says. “I feel like something that was taken from me I got back and am using in my art.”
The full interview airs in Sunday night at 7pm!
