Jennifer Lawrence Was Pressured To Lose Weight for 'The Hunger Games'
She was just 20 years old and already a size 4.
Even as beautiful as she is, Jennifer Lawrence was pressured to lose weight for her role as Katniss Everdeen for The Hunger Games.
In an interview with Viola Davis for Variety‘s Actors on Actors, the actor revealed, “In The Hunger Games, it was an awesome responsibility. Those books were huge, and I knew that the audience was children. I remember the biggest conversation was, ‘How much weight are you going to lose?’”
The Kentucky native, who was 20 years old at the time and not to mention a size four, did not want young children watching the movie to feel as though they had to alter their bodies to look like her. Dedicated to being a size-inclusive role model, she continues, “Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don’t know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can’t because they’re not a certain weight and I can’t let that seep into my brain either.”
Lawrence clearly possess Katniss’s courage and strength as she proved naysayers wrong, not only in regards to her weight, but her gender as well. The mother of one recalls that some were skeptical about how successful a female lead could be in an action movie as she smartly assesses, “I remember when I was [working on the movie], nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”
While women like Angelina Jolie, who played Lara Croft, have paved the way for female action stars like Lawrence, she’s not entirely wrong as it is certainly a rarity.
She adds, “It just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just to keep certain people out of the movies and keep certain people in the same positions that they’ve always been in.”
We’re glad to see times are changing, hopefully for good.
