Jennifer Lawrence Gets Why Fans Turned on Her at Peak Fame — She Found That Persona Annoying Too

Jennifer Lawrence is very aware of the whiplash that came with her fame. She went from everywhere-all-the-time to a hard reset, and now she is talking about why that happened and what comes next.

JLaw on JLaw: why the backlash made sense to her

In a new conversation with The New Yorker, Lawrence looks back at her peak-2010s persona and basically says, yeah, that version of me could be a lot. She calls those old interviews painfully hyper and says that oversharing was both who she was and a shield she put up when the spotlight got blinding. She even name-checks Ariana Grande, saying the SNL impression of her nailed it.

"Oh, no. So hyper. So embarrassing... it was my genuine personality, but it was also a defense mechanism... to just be, like, 'I’m not like that! I poop my pants every day!'... I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying. I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying."

She adds that the pushback eventually became, in her words, "uninhabitable." Not because of her work or politics, but because people were reacting to her whole vibe. That is a pretty stark, and honestly refreshing, bit of self-awareness from a star who lived through the full rise-and-backlash cycle in public.

Stepping back, then choosing her shots

After dominating the last decade, she intentionally hit the brakes. Over the past six years, she has only popped up in three films. That slowdown was not an accident; it was a course correction.

What she is doing next

• Die My Love (Nov 7): Lawrence teams with Robert Pattinson for director Lynne Ramsay, adapting Ariana Harwicz’s novel about a mother spiraling through psychosis while trying to stay tethered to reality. This is Ramsay territory through and through, and it sounds intense in the best way.
• What Happens At Night: Martin Scorsese directs Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio in a dreamy, unsettling story about a married American couple who travel to a remote, snowy European town to adopt a baby. They land in a cavernous, nearly empty hotel and cross paths with a flamboyant chanteuse, a sleazy businessman, and a charismatic faith healer. As the strangeness piles up, they lose their grip on who they are and what their marriage even is.

If the last few years were about stepping out of the blast zone, these choices look like a smart re-entry: fewer projects, strong directors, and material that is nothing like the red-carpet overshare era she is ready to leave behind.