The 2014 scandal in which a collection of nearly 500 private photos of celebrities was leaked online had a lot of different reactions. Some looked out of curiosity, some blamed the women for taking the photos, and some just found the whole thing funny.
None of the above reactions took into account exactly how awful it would be for the individuals to learn that these photos had been spread around the internet for millions to see. Even without fame and with a much smaller audience, this kind of thing would be devastating, but on the public stage, it's even more extreme.
Back in November, around three years after the leak, Jennifer Lawrence spoke about her reaction to learning the news. Not mincing words, she referred to the incident as being like getting "gang-banged by the f***ing planet".
"There's not one person in the world that is not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me," she said on an episode of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter Podcast. "You can just be at a barbecue and somebody can just pull them up on their phone. That was a really impossible thing to process."
Now, the actress has been asked about the dreadful experience again and this time opened up about how the leaks affected her mental health and relationships. Speaking to The Mirror recently, she said:
"There was a long period when I didn't want to be seen sexually and I didn't want anybody to see my flesh. There were things that made me uncomfortable.
"I am in the single mode where I am like, 'Cool, I can do whatever I want and I can be alone and watch terrible TV'.
"And then, of course, in a few months I will be devastatingly lonely and feel like I'm on some long waiting list. But I am not there yet."
Back in December, she said something similar during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Speaking with Oprah, she said, "I just thought, I'll never do that again.' I'll never share that part of my self ever since it got shared against my will."
But it looks like she is reclaiming her sexuality now, in her upcoming film Red Sparrow. In the thriller, Lawrence plays a Russian ballerina turned spy, who is forced into using her body as a weapon. The role was challenging for a lot of reasons, in particular, the sexual content, which sometimes required her to strip completely nude.
As she explained to TotalFilm, the role actually helped her deal with the trauma of the hacking:
"My character is told to strip in front of the class, and I had to strip in front of a class and an entire crew. I worked myself up [about the scene], I was really nervous. But [director] Francis [Lawrence] made me feel so much more comfortable. Everybody made me feel like I had clothes on. And then when I finished, I just walked out feeling empowered. I felt amazing.
It was never my choice for the world to see my naked body. I didn’t get to make that decision. In doing this film, in doing this for my art…I really felt, I still feel, empowered. I feel like I took something back that was taken from me."
Hopefully, Lawrence has managed to move past this horrible experience with the help of this new role. You can see how it all turned out when Red Sparrow is released on March 2.
