Jennifer Lawrence Has Revealed Why She Was So Annoying In Her 20s

Jennifer Lawrence has been a movie star since she was 19. She has received four Oscar nominations and one Best Actress win; she is the former anchor of an international blockbuster franchise; and she was once the highest-paid actress in the world. She has been scrutinized by the media and public alike. 

At first, this went well. Her comments about butt plugs made national headlines; her care-free foulmouthed demeanor informed BuzzFeed’s reporting strategy for nearly half a decade. She was perfecting her personal brand (folksy, self-effacing) just as Instagram was blowing up, allowing thousands of far less talented and funny people to do just the same, with far fewer resources.

But to paraphrase “Tomorrow Will be Kinder” from the Hunger Games soundtrack, a brighter day was not coming her way. The early 2010s were not as kind to women as they are now (and that remains a work in progress). Soon, those aforementioned “far less talented and funny people,” in Instagram posts and Twitter threads and even BuzzFeed articles, began to criticize J-Law. When she tripped at the Oscars for a second time in a row, in 2014, her fate was sealed: J-Law was declared a fraud. Her fame, success, and talent magnified the criticism, fancying her a piece of china rendered worthless after just one crack.

But now she’s apologizing.

In an equally somber and frothy New Yorker profile, J-Law has looked back on her old interviews with discomfort. “So hyper. So embarrassing,” she tells Jia Tolentino in the piece, explaining that, while her down-to-earth persona in her 20s was her genuine personality, it was also a defense mechanism. Indeed, she had been responding to a sudden ascent to fame that felt “treacherous and false,” and had hoped to avoid the pull of hypocritical Hollywood pretentiousness by clinging to her love of poop jokes. 

Additionally, her fame brought ever more pernicious drawbacks. Writes Tolentino:

“Lawrence had anticipated the turn in public opinion long before it happened, and rarely felt at ease. ‘I was young, I lived alone, I was being chased,’ she said. Paparazzi followed her when she drove around in Los Angeles; at night, adrenaline threw off her sleep. She had too many projects and was doing too much press, and she felt ‘pissed’… But the backlash did make her life seem ‘uninhabitable,’ Lawrence said. ‘I felt—I didn’t feel, I was, I think—rejected not for my movies, not for my politics, but for me, for my personality.’ 

Nevertheless, Lawrence’s career did suffer a setback after her prolonged fall from grace. Between 2016 and 2021, J-Law vehicles like Passengers, Mother!, Red Sparrow, and Don’t Look Up failed to reach the heights of her previous outings, and Mother! even managed to scare people from seeing a movie for the rest of their lives.

However, J-Law’s string of so-so movies was not necessarily her fault, or the public’s. She shined in all of them, and even attracted goodwill for her role in Passengers thanks to her clear surplus of talent over Chris Pratt. Also, she does not need to justify her 20s! Sure, she pissed off all of Hawaii when she scratched her butt on those sacred rocks on the Hunger Games set, thus dislodging a boulder that almost killed her sound guy, but that story is objectively funny now that the Internet is several years removed from it, and less regimented by self-righteous clout-chasers.

Also, who hasn’t done dumb shit in their 20s? One time, in college, I staged a makeout orgy in the middle of our university library during finals week. Sometimes, to relieve stress, my friend and I would destroy all the pumpkins that belonged to our campus’s most homophobic fraternity. That same season, I streaked across my entire dormitory in freezing weather. Later, in 2016, I drove down my neighborhood’s main avenue at 5 miles per hour, creating a ten-car traffic jam, so that I could shout obscenities at my closeted Mormon boyfriend through my passenger window as he strolled peacefully down the sidewalk next to me. In 2017, I squealed at Ben Platt when I saw him outside Lincoln Center in NYC, causing him to scurry away and fear for his life.

J-Law does not need to apologize for anything. She’s a human being with the same flaws, ambitions, and desires as the rest of us, and her only crime is being a successful woman who rose to fame in the Information Age .
Thankfully, though, she still hasn’t lost her touch. In that same New Yorker profile, in the midst of discussing her upcoming, devastating film Die My Love, Lawrence admits that she’ll stop vaping constantly in November … as soon as she gets her boobs done. So, please never change, J-Law. Embrace your 20s, and keep telling poop jokes. The world is better for it.