Jennifer Lawrence made headlines this summer for starring in her very first major comedy outing, yet even more headlines probably focused on her really going nude in No Hard Feelings for a set of unforgettable extended beach scenes. This isn’t the first time the actress has made daring choices with roles, and she’s generally been one to shake things up with her career. In fact, years ago she spoke out about how there is more than one “side” to Hollywood, and how you have to nurture those sides in order to make it as an a-lister.
Jennifer Lawrence has always been pretty career savvy. More than a decade ago, when she was breaking out with the indie film Winter’s Bone (our review), the actress said she’d told her friends she was going to make it in New York. They thought she’d be right back home in Kentucky within a couple of years, but here she is in 2023: splitting time between an NYC penthouse and a gated home in Beverly Hills, which she shares with her now-husband Cooke Maroney and their young son.
So, if the makes a move, you gotta think she’s considered it fairly carefully, and that’s exactly what she told The Guardian she did when she posed for the cover of Esquire at only 19, rocking a bikini and another red suit that might draw comparisons to Baywatch. She later told the outlet that it was a simple choice to make. And it all comes down to the concept of “artistic” versus “business.”
There are two sides of this job. There's the artistic side, which is acting in the movie. But there's also the business side. And I understood that the shoot was a good business decision. I had many people that I completely trust – agents, publicists – and they said it was a good idea. And I agreed. I understood why it had to happen. I'm sure I've been criticized for doing it but you know what? I don't care.
While she was still new to the industry when she did the Esquire photoshoot, she said her parents knew about it and were proud of her and that she didn’t regret the choice. She’s a person who still, to this day, seemingly enjoys opening herself “up to do more things.” In another interview with Black Book she noted:
They’re really proud of me, and they know I’m doing what I was made to do. Growing up, I was always like, look at me! I was definitely was an actress in-the-making. So they’re very supportive of me. And they’re actually very supportive of the Esquire shoot, too, because they knew why I was doing it. Which was to avoid being typecast as the girl from Winter’s Bone. To come out with something to counteract the total non-sexual, woolen-cap-pulled-over-my-eyes look of the movie and open myself up to do more things. You know when you’ve been watching a lot of dark, heavy movies and then all of a sudden you’re like, ugh, I just need some crap! I just want to do something fun. I mean, nothing that’s stupid. But I would like to move on to do something different. Have a bigger trailer. Maybe wear makeup in a movie. I mean, that’d just crazy, right? Me wearing makeup in a movie? Imagine the possibilities!
Somewhat amusingly, Jennifer Lawrence would go on to join the The Hunger Games cast, which was also a role that didn’t really require a ton of makeup. For No Hard Feelings, she was typically a little more glammed up, but while there’s more makeup in her roles now, her attitude has seemingly not changed. She did her own nude scene for the movie Red Sparrow and now the 2023 movie, and she had a good attitude about it for her latest film, saying the scene was simply “hilarious.”
After more than a decade in the industry of Hollywood, Lawrence certainly has a grip on how to nurture both the artistic and business sides of the equation, and sometimes, as is the case with the raunchy-yet-well-written No Hard Feelings, both the commercial and the artistic can be highlighted in the same fell swoop.
