How I caught the Girl On Fire

BEVERLY HILLS — For a while there, when she walked into the suite at Four Seasons converted into a mini-studio for the Hunger Games: Catching Fire junket, I thought Jennifer Lawrence would emit fire as she does in her landmark role as Katniss Everdeen in the franchise that catapulted her overnight as Hollywood’s most bankable star.  

She was wearing a strapless, white short dress and a sweet smile that set the tone for the interview with members of the international media. I was a bit disappointed when Jennifer didn’t reenact the Quarter Quell interview scene in Catching Fire in which, dressed in a fabulous white bridal gown (described by a US magazine as “a caged bodice meant to look like frozen flames”), she walks toward the edge of the stage, takes a graceful turn to showcase her sartorial elegance, emitting fire around her in the process, and when she faces the audience again, her white gown has turned black but she still looks radiant in it. She’s gorgeous in any color.

During the Oscars where she won Best Actress for her performance as the recently-widowed jobless Tiffany Maxwell (with leading man Bradley Cooper as Pat Solitano, a man with bipolar disorder just released from a psychiatric hospital) in Silver Linings Playbook, at 22 becoming one of the youngest Best Actress winners. She tripped on her way to the stage to accept her award and earned a heart-warming applause from the audience when she joked in her thank-you speech, “You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell.”

The 2012 blockbuster Hunger Games (which earned more than $700-M worldwide), based upon the best-selling trilogy by Suzanne Collins, moviegoers were introduced to the intriguing dystopian culture of Panem where 12 oppressed districts choose a teenage boy or girl to compete in a competition of survival in Panem’s glittering Capitol. The character Katniss is a reluctant 16-year-old heroine who, together with fellow Tribute Peeta Mellark (played by Josh Hutcherson), emerge the Victors. In Catching Fire, this time directed by Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer), Katniss and Peeta are reaped for games calculated to totally destroy them. From there, I leave you to find out for yourselves what happens next.

Born Jennifer Shrader Lawrence on Aug. 15, 1990, in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, Jennifer (now fondly known simply as JLaw) was hardly noticed even she played major roles on TV (The Bill Engvall Show, 2007-2009), indie films (The Burning Plain, 2008; and Winter’s Bone, 2009) and mainstream films (X-Men: First Class as Raven Darkholme in 2011, a role she reprises in X-Men: Days of Future Past which is showing in 2014).

And then came Hunger Games which radically changed Jennifer’s life and career. How did she cope with it? That was the first question I popped at her as soon as we sat down for this one-on-one. (But did you know that it took Jennifer three days before she said yes to Hunger Games, telling Good Morning America, “There’s not a lot of decisions that you make that change your life forever.”)

“Uhm,” she hesitated, as if trying to find the right words, “just kind of I stayed close to my friends and my family, and we just kind of stayed inside the house for a very long time. It took me a while before I could venture outside.”

Oh, was it scary?

In Catching Fire, Jennifer in a fabulous white wedding bridal gown takes a graceful turn onstage and emits fire just as she does in several other scenes, thus earning the monicker Girl on Fire

“Yes,” Jennifer smiled with relief, “it was very scary!”

On the set of Silver Linings Playbook, the first movie she did after her Oscar win, Jennifer told People magazine that she asked co-stars Bradley and Robert De Niro (as Bradley’s father) “what it’s like to have people come up to you on the street,” something she has learned how to deal with even as she wouldn’t let success go to her head because, as she said in an ABC interview a few months ago, “Oh, God, it’s going to end. I’m not going to be relevant forever.” Asked by Vanity Fair how she has remained level-headed, Jennifer replied that everybody had been asking her that question, “And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. I’m making movies.’”

Her character Katniss is strong-willed and fearless. I asked Jennifer, “Are you in any way like her in real life?”

With her sky-blue (was it light green?) eyes fixed on mine, she answered laughing, “Actually, no, although I wish that I had the talent and the courage that she had.”

Katniss faces challenges head-on unmindful of risks to life and limb. Next question: How does Jennifer deal with challenges in real life?

“I retreat,” she admitted without embarrassment, “and then, depending on what the challenge is, I sometimes face it squarely. But a lot of time I’m very much a baby when I have problems. I go inside my room, crawl up in bed and cry and cry.”

Has the huge success of Hunger Games put her in a position where she can choose only the roles that she wants to play (and not just, you know, accepting just any role because there are bills to pay)?

“I enjoy the greatest indulgence of being able to take breaks and say no to things.”

And which real-life person would she like to play?

“I think Julia Fitzgerald would be it, a very amazing person. Why? Because she leads a very intense life and I like her for her being different. She has a very exciting personality, somewhat crazy. She’s a genius.” (Julia Fitzgerald wrote several books, among them Desert Queen, Slave Lady, Royal Slave, Venus Rising, Taboo and the Troubadour Books Scarlet Woman and Firebird.)

(E-mail reactions at entphilstar@yahoo.com. You may also send your questions to askrickylo@gmail.com. For more updates, photos and videos visit www.philstar.com/funfare or follow me on www.twitter/therealrickylo.)

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