Four years ago, Glamour‘s cover featured an up-and-coming Kentucky-born actress named Jennifer Lawrence, “on the cusp,” we wrote, “of being mega-famous.” Well, “mega-famous” doesn’t even begin to describe it: Since then, Lawrence has starred in blockbusters, won an Oscar, and launched a thousand GIFs with her self-deprecating pizza gags and red-carpet pratfalls. She’s also pulled off a hugely difficult Hollywood feat: being both immensely likeable and seriously ballsy, taking stands on issues like fair pay for women. When the Sony hack spilled correspondence that revealed she’d been paid substantially less than her male costars onAmerican Hustle, she jabbed back with an essay in Lena Dunham’s newsletter Lenny, taking aim at the double standards that sometimes pressure women to act nicer, and negotiate less, than their male peers. “I want to fly under the radar,” she says, but “my mouth has just made it impossible.” Well, good!
CINDI LEIVE: You were on the cover of Glamour four years ago. The first Hunger Games was just coming out. And you said—
JENNIFER LAWRENCE: Oh God. This is my least favorite part. As soon as somebody’s like, “And you said,” I’m like, “Oh God. Oh no.”
CL: [Laughs.] You said, “I feel like I got a ticket to another planet and I’m moving there, and there’s no turning back. And I don’t know if I’m gonna like that other planet or have friends there.” So… how’s life on that other planet?
JL: It’s really lovely. Very nice…. It took a few years to adjust. I didn’t really realize how angry and distorted I felt. For, like, probably a solid three years. It had nothing to do with Hunger Games…. It had to do with the thing that came with Hunger Games. I still felt entitled to a certain life that I just wasn’t allowed to have [anymore]. I felt like I had the right to say, “I don’t want to be photographed right now, I don’t want people outside my house right now, I don’t want my nephews in People.” I felt so much anger of “Why can’t I just do my job?” And then you just get used to it—and it just is.
