Jennifer Lawrence clearly isn’t a midnight toker. Last year, the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook star raised eyebrows when she revealed that she got high for real while playing a Mary Jane fan in Adam McKay’s end-of-days comedy, Don’t Look Up. In a new interview with The New York Times, Lawrence said that she was under the influence as far back as the first Hunger Games blockbuster.
“The boys and I would always go back to our hotel and just drink whiskey and get stoned,” Lawrence revealed, referring to her co-stars in that franchise, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth. As she explained, that was the trio’s way of coping with the intense public spotlight that followed them during the making of that four-film franchise, and which shone especially brightly at the crowd-packed premieres.
But Lawrence insisted that she’s not falling back on old habits after walking the red carpets for her latest film Causeway, which debuts Nov. 4 on Apple TV+ following its Toronto International Film Festival premiere in September. “My mother-in-law’s going to love this,” she joked. “I don’t do it anymore, I’m a mom!” (Lawrence had her first child with husband, Cooke Maroney, in February.)
Speaking with The New York Times, Lawrence says that Causeway marks the beginning of her career second act — an act where she’s more firmly in control over her choices. “I had let myself be hijacked,” she observed about her post-Hunger Games run of movies that included divisive films like Dark Phoenix and Red Sparrow.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, you guys are here because I’m here and I’m here because you’re here,'” she said of how her Hunger Games fans reacted to those movies. “‘Wait, who decided that this was a good movie?'”
One film in particular stands out as a mistake when Lawrence glances in her rearview: the 2016 sci-fi drama Passengers, which paired her with newly ascendent Marvel Studios star Chris Pratt. Although their combined star power pushed the movie to a $300 million worldwide gross, critics and audiences alike panned Passengers for its creepy storyline and controversial ending.
Reflecting on the film now, Lawrence revealed that a famous friend tried warning her away from making it. “Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her.” Making movies like Passengers inevitably took its toll. “I felt like more of a celebrity than an actor,” she admitted. “Cut off from my creativity, my imagination.”
Fortunately, producing and starring in Causeway reignited that creative fire and — along with her new family — has helped her distance herself from her Hunger Games alter ego. “Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss Everdeen, I guess,” she said about her choice to change her legal name to Jennifer Maroney. “I was born with the name Jennifer Lawrence, but that got taken from me when I was 21 and I never got it back….That name already belongs to them.”
Meanwhile, the future of The Hunger Games belongs to West Side Story star, Rachel Zegler, who is starring in the upcoming prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, due in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023. “That makes me feel old as mold,” Lawrence said. “I remember being 21 and thinking, ‘My God, one day they’ll redo and remake them. But I’ll be so old by then! I’ll be dead!'”
Causeway premieres Friday, Nov. 4 on Apple TV+.
