Everyone who saw Winter's Bone either at its Sundance debut or in is theatrical run this summer has agreed on one thing: Jennifer Lawrence is going to be a star. The 19-year-old actress anchors the film with a brilliant performance, and with her gorgeous looks and prodigious talent, the question wasn't whether or not she'd be getting great roles, but how many Oscars she'd have by age 40.
Now she's picked her first post-Winter's Bone part, and it might not be what you're expecting: THR reports that she's been cast as Mystique in X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn's reboot of the franchise that already stars James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Lawrence is only the latest name to join the cast, which is coming together quickly as Vaughn as his team work to meet their June 2011 release date. Nicholas Hoult, Alice Eve, Caleb Landry Jones, Aaron Johnson and even Kevin Bacon, who was previously reported as being in negotiations, are on board as well.
Mystique, of course was played by Rebecca Romijn in the first three films, an actress certainly cast for her looks above acting talent, as her face was obscured by prosthetics nearly the entire time anyway. It's not clear how big a role a younger Mystique will play in this story about the early days of the X-Men, but it would be a crime to cast an actress as good as Lawrence and not give her enough to do.
And even though X-Men: First Class may not seem as classy as doing another small indie, it's not hard to see why Lawrence would want the job: she's a gorgeous young actress whose breakout role was pretty de-glamorized, and she surely knows as well as anyone that she'll need to be seen as versatile to keep her career going forward. So long as joining X-Men doesn't lock her into years of unfulfilling side-character work in dumb sequels, this could be a really smart step toward launching her career even higher.
