Jennifer Lawrence Blames Her Movie Flops On Someone Else

Jennifer Lawrence feels her representatives steered her to poor quality blockbusters and away from higher-quality films.

By Matthew Creith | Updated

As far as modern-day A-list movie stars go, Jennifer Lawrence has proven herself to be among the best. With stellar performances opposite leading actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper, Lawrence’s career was catapulted into stardom largely due to her acting talents and devotion to her craft. According to a report by the New York Times, Jennifer Lawrence has been unhappy with her career as of late, pointing to a slog of bad scripts and decisions by her representatives to keep her in blockbuster flops rather than lauded independent films.

Jennifer Lawrence is in the middle of promotional tours for her new indie flick, Causeway, which has seen a return to form for a performer who has been at the forefront of franchises in recent memory. After winning an Academy Award for her leading role in the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook, Lawrence went on to continue fronting for The Hunger Games franchise and made her way into other films of the X-Men series.

Her representatives shielded her from returning to independent movies that made her famous, including a star-making turn in Winter’s Bone, and Lawrence has become refreshingly honest about why many of her recent movies have flopped due to this decision.

jennifer lawrence

Even though Jennifer Lawrence is a highly successful box office draw, due in large part because of her work in well-known franchises, she realized that scripts from talented directors whom she regarded in high esteem simply weren’t coming her way.

Lawrence recounted to the New York Times that her representatives at the time convinced her “that her audience wouldn’t understand” smaller independent movies that she was drawn to, and that they’d probably prefer to see her in large-scale productions. Apparently, after the incredibly flop box office take for X-Men: Dark Phoenix in 2019, Lawrence fired her CAA representatives and took a Matthew McConaughey approach to go back to independent features.

Not to say that Jennifer Lawrence was ever out of the game entirely. The actor made a string of successful hit films since she burst onto the independent movie market, including a frequent collaboration with director David O. Russell that saw Lawrence nominated for Oscars in three of his movies alone. But it seems to be her drive to work with talented directors that has brought Lawrence to the place she currently resides as she’s working hard to define her career on her own terms.

Recently, it was revealed that Jennifer Lawrence pulled out of a high-profile project from director Adam McKay that would have seen the actor portray a version of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced business owner that Amanda Seyfried embodied this year in an Emmy-winning role. Lawrence felt that Seyfried’s work should stand on its own, so she chose not to do another project that replicated some of that performance.

With Causeway currently available for streaming on Apple TV+, Jennifer Lawrence is showcasing a performance as a traumatized Army veteran while working alongside Brian Tyree Henry, as well as working with a female director whose work she’s respected for a long time, Lynn Ramsey.