Jennifer Lawrence Says She Was Pressured to Lose Weight For ‘The Hunger Games’

When Jennifer Lawrence earned the biggest role of her career, as the heroically flawed Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, the first question asked of her was a shocking one: “How much weight are you going to lose?”

Lawrence convened with fellow Oscar winner Viola Davis for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series to discuss the pressures she faced after being cast in the dystopian franchise. “In The Hunger Games, it was an awesome responsibility,” she said. “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?’ 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.”

During her four-movie stint with the series, Lawrence repeatedly spoke about toxic conversations surrounding her body in the role. “I’m never going to starve myself for a part,” she told Elle in 2013. “I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner.’ That’s something I was really conscious of during training…I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong, not thin and underfed.”

In a 2018 Vanity Fair cover story, Lawrence recalled being asked to stand nude in a lineup of other actors before a producer who urged her to slim down. “I’ve always wondered what it would take to get me to really diet, to really be hungry, because I’ve never done it for a movie,” she said. “For Hunger Games, they told me to lose weight, and then I discovered Jack in the Box. [2018 spy thriller] Red Sparrow was the first time that I was really hungry, and disciplined. I can’t be in character as an ex-ballerina and not feel like an ex-ballerina.”