Jennifer Lawrence has been forced to respond to the immense backlash she faced after saying that she was the first female lead in an action movie earlier this week. Yikes...
Lawrence had sat down with fellow actress Viola Davis for Variety's "actors on actors" series - where actors hold intimate one-on-one discussions with fellow stars about their work and the industry as a whole.
The pair engaged in a 45-minute conversation, with the attention eventually focused on 32-year-old Lawrence and her role in The Hunger Games films. Based on a series of novels with the same name, they follow the story of Katniss Everdeen (played by Lawrence) a young girl who lives in a dystopian universe where children are randomly selected each year to compete in a battle to the death called The Hunger Games.
The franchise was a great success and caused Lawrence's acting career to skyrocket. However, the beloved actress appeared to make an odd comment when discussing her role in the hit movie franchise.
"I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work - because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead," she told Davis, 57.
She then reminisced on the ways she feels the industry has changed, adding that she's happy that more movies are able to break barriers in the genre. "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 a lie to keep certain people out of the movies," she said.
Netizens latched onto Lawrence's first statement like barnacles on a boat hull, taking to Twitter to voice their opinions. "With the upmost (sic) respect to Jennifer Lawrence, these women (and more) have pioneered female representation in action cinema. Can we be doing more? Absolutely. A lot more," someone tweeted.
"But we have to acknowledge film history and how these actors have paved the way for film heroines today," they added, referencing several women who played titular characters in action movies, including Michelle Yeoh, Angelina Jolie, and Sigourney Weaver.
"Jennifer Lawrence was the first female action star. Linda Hamilton, Pam Grier, Michelle Yeoh, Sigourney Weaver, Mila Jovovich, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie, Michelle Rodriguez, Carrie-Anne Moss, Halle Berry. [These] women owe everything to Jennifer Lawrence's trailblazing," another user quipped.
Lawrence was evidently not prepared for the backlash her comment would receive, and she promptly responded by speaking to The Hollywood Reporter.
"That's certainly not what I meant to say at all. I know that I am not the only woman who has ever led an action film. What I meant to emphasize was how good it feels," she stated. "And I meant that with Viola - to blow past these old myths that you hear about … about the chatter that you would hear around that kind of thing. But it was my blunder and it came out wrong. I had nerves talking to a living legend."
Well, there you have it, folks!