She was born Jennifer Shrader Lawrence on 15 August 1990, in Kentucky. Perhaps because of the influence of having two older brothers, she was a tomboy growing up.
‘I didn’t have anybody to teach me how to put on makeup or wear a dress,’ Lawrence recalled. ‘I wanted to be a girl. I just didn’t know how.’ She was also the youngest in her family by quite a distance – her brothers were five and 10 years older than her respectively.
Lawrence explained: ‘I always understood I couldn’t ride in the front seat, choose what we watched on TV or pick which restaurant we went to. Being the youngest and the only girl, I think everyone was so worried about me being a brat that they went into the exact opposite direction of treating me like Cinderella. I’d slap my brother on the arm, and he’d throw me down the stairs!’
Growing up, Lawrence toyed with the idea of acting, even going as far as to appear as Desdemona in a production of Othello. Sports were more her thing, though, playing basketball, hockey and softball. She even attempted a stint as a cheerleader, but conceded she was ‘the manliest one’. ‘I had the lowest voice,’ she said.
When she was 14 she found her big break after visiting New York with her mother.
‘The first time that my feet hit the sidewalk in Manhattan, I knew that I wanted to live there,’ she said ‘My mum and I were watching street dancing and some guy asked if he could take my picture. That picture got sent around to all these acting and modelling agencies, and when we went home to Kentucky, I begged my parents every single day to let me try it. The head of a modelling agency told me I had to choose between being a starving actress or a supermodel. I actually thought it was a real question, I didn’t realise she was being sarcastic, and I answered “starving actress”.’
Auditions quickly sprung up – she impressed executives at Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups so much, they said it was one of the best auditions they had ever seen. But when Lawrence’s mother told her that they were probably lying, she thought her dreams of being an actress were dashed. Her mother was no fan of show business, probably acutely aware of how hard it is to make it as a child actress.
Help came from an unusual source: her older brothers. They knew how much this meant to her, and fought her corner. Lawrence explained: ‘They said: “Mom went to all our baseball and football games and travelled all around the country for us. She would do it for us if it were sports. This in Jen’s sport.”’
So her mother agreed that she would move to New York with her, providing that she continued to be educated online. Lawrence added: ‘I wouldn’t have been happy in high school. My mum always said that school changed me. I went from this happy kid to having anxiety problems. I used to get these crazy cramps. Everybody else could understand what was on the chalkboard, but I felt so stupid the entire time I was there. My mum was on my butt all through regular school, but as soon as I started acting, I knew I couldn’t do it unless I graduated with a 3.9 [grade A]. That was my incentive – I locked myself in my room and just got through it. It was actually the first time my mum didn’t have to be on at me about it. Some people think I missed out, but I had the choice of being in class or moving to New York… well, I got the childhood of my dreams.’
Lawrence starred in TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show in 2007 – a show she deemed as ‘fun’. Running for two years, the sitcom was co-created and starred comedian Bill Engvall, who played a family counsellor struggling to understand his own family, which consisted of Nancy Travis as his wife and his three children, played by Jennifer Lawrence, Graham Patrick Martin and Skyler Gisondo.
Engvall said about the show: ‘One of the things I talk about in my act is that, as a parent, all you’re basically doing is keeping a lid on things until the kids go to college. I want my show to be a reflection of real life and the real issues that parents and kids face each day.’
Lawrence played the eldest daughter, Lauren Pearson, and she said about the show: ‘We all became like family. It funded my indie career, so I could do the movies that I wanted.’
Her career was up and running, despite having her part cut out of the final cut of the film Drillbit Taylor. The film, co-written by Knocked Up funnyman Seth Rogen, originally began as an idea by iconic eighties director John Hughes. However, it was the darker roles that intrigued Lawrence, and she had already earmarked the sort of character she wanted to play. She looked at Charlize Theron’s part in Monster. Theron was a Hollywood bombshell, mostly used to playing glamorous parts. But she turned heads and shot to Oscar glory by playing the lead role in the biopic of the serial killer. This was the sort of film that Lawrence was desperate to star in, conceding that ‘she’d love to shave her head’ if the part depended on it. She got to work with Theron on The Burning Plain, and impressed everyone on set straight away.
She impressed again thanks to a blistering turn in The Poker House, a bleak story based on the life of the film’s first-time director Lori Petty – who was an actress in films like Tank Girl and A League Of Their Own. Lawrence plays a teenage girl who must fend for her younger sisters in a house that belongs to her drugged out mother, who operates a gambling den out of their home. ‘The character is the exact opposite of me,’ she said in the 2008 profile in Interview magazine. ‘But everyone should stretch themselves.’
The harrowing film also sees Lawrence’s character raped in the film. She said: ‘I was young and I hadn’t really done anything else, so everything that I read I wanted to do. But now that I’m older and I actually have a point of view, I can see what an amazing brilliant script it is and how it grabs you and it has teeth and it’s real and it’s ugly, and all the things that aren’t usually appealing really appeal to me. When I was young I thought it’d be fun. It was a movie, I auditioned for it. I got it and then I just started acting. Now I can really look back on it and appreciate it.’
When Jennifer Lawrence won the role of Katniss, she had to see off a staggering 30 actresses who had either read with or met the director. Other hopefuls included Emily Browning, Chloe Moretz, Saoirse Ronan, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin.
At the start, however, Lawrence wasn’t sure she should take the part, taking three days before saying yes. She was a promising actress, carving out a career in critically acclaimed indie fare – much like Twilight’s Kristen Stewart. She suddenly became a media sensation – changing her life instantly.
Stewart once ranted to Elle: ‘What you don’t see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction. The photos are so… I feel like I’m looking at someone being raped. A lot of the time I can’t handle it. I never expected that this would be my life. It really bothers me when people write nasty s**t about me, and the perception is that I don’t give a f**k. It could not be further from the truth.’
‘What I say is, why would I want anything that’s private to become entertainment for other people?… People say that if I just tell them everything I’ll be left alone, but God, you think if I tell people they’ll leave me alone? They pick up every little scrap, and that’s much worse.’
Lawrence agonised over the decision, saying: ‘It was the middle of the night in England, and I was in bed when I got the call. And I was so in love with the books and the script, and suddenly it was right in my face – and the size of the decision was terrifying.’
She added: ‘I got a taste of fame from the Oscars and I didn’t like it. That’s a terrible thing to say, because it’s such a tremendous honour. But I went from being normal Jennifer to being at these parties where I couldn’t just be the girl making dumb jokes in the corner. Everybody’s treating me differently and talking to me differently and I know that they’re lying and they they’re sucking up to me.
‘It was a very bizarre time to be presented with a part that could arguably make me the most famous person my age a year from now. I remember sitting in a coffee shop in London, thinking: “If I say yes to this job, next year at this time people will be taking pictures of me with their phones”. And I couldn’t find a bright side to it. But I didn’t want to say no to a script that I loved because I was scared.’
Her mother was so against her becoming an actress in the beginning, but it was she who helped Lawrence make the biggest decision of her life. ‘I called my mom and she called me a hypocrite, because when I was doing indie movies and everyone was asking why I didn’t do studio movies, I said the size of the movie didn’t matter. And she said: “Here’s a movie you love and you were thinking of turning it down because of its size.” I thought: ‘I don’t want to miss out because I’m scared. I never want me being scared to stop me from doing something.” But I knew in my heart that I wanted it – it was just about working out all the fears.’
Lawrence said about accepting the part: ‘When you’re a big fan of the books you’re always worried about them becoming a movie, because it’s usually a disappointment. But I met with Gary Ross, the director, and I loved every word that came out of his mouth. And I knew that he was the only one who could do it. And then finding out that Suzanne Collins was also writing the screenplay – everything was just so comforting. And I was just so excited about all of it.’
Talking about Katniss, Lawrence said: ‘The cool thing about Katniss is that every fan has such a personal relationship with her and they understand and know her in a singular way. I’m a massive fan too, so I get it. She’s incredibly powerful, brave and tough – and yet she has a tenderness and complexity. It was very humbling to hear that Suzanne and Gary feel I embody those traits.’
Jackie Emerson, who plays Fox Face in the movie, told MTV: ‘Jennifer completely and fully is Katniss, and I can say that with complete and utter confidence. She is the most talented actress I’ve ever seen, that’s a big thing, you know. She’s also so funny, really nice, charismatic, she’s got so many sides to herself that relate directly back to Katniss. She cares so much about her family and she really devotes herself to everything she does, and that’s something Katniss does too.’
Lawrence told Vanity Fair about her character: ‘Katniss is an incredible character: she’s a hunter but not a killer, a 16 year old who’s being forced into the arena. These kids are killing one another only because if they don’t they’ll die. It’s heartbreaking.’
Gary Ross also raved about his leading lady: ‘She has such command and control of what she’s doing, which is a raw, emotional power – it’s like looking into a blast furnace at times, and it literally can knock you back in your seat.’
Liam Hemsworth said: ‘Jennifer was great. She is fantastic. Really easy to work with, no drama, really down-to-earth, such a funny girl. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about her. She really was great to work with. And it always makes it easier when you’re working with people that you like and you enjoy being around.’
Josh Hutcherson told Vanity Fair: ‘She and I hit it off. We’re both very crazy people – we don’t really hold anything back. We were able to have a really good time, and not let anything get in the way of looking stupid or anything like that. We probably looked stupid about 99 per cent of the time, but we had a good time doing it!’
Woody Harrelson told Empire magazine: ‘Gary cast Jennifer, and I think he had in mind that she’s a really strong personality with an unusually keen sense of humour. There’s something in her eyes that you can tell she’s a survivor, even though she’s young. She just has that in her eyes, and that’s Katniss.’
Born on 12 October 1992 in Kentucky to Michelle and Chris, Josh Hutcherson’s house was a warm one that was filled with love – not to mention lots of animals as well, including two dogs named Diesel and Nixon.
Showing off was always a big thing with Hutcherson, even at a young age. From the age of four he would put on little shows for his parents, telling everyone that would listen that this little boy from Kentucky was going to be a movie star. And when he was not entertaining his family, he was using his dramatic talents for other dubious means – faking sickness to get out of school.
It wasn’t long before his talents got noticed. He explained: ‘I got in touch with an agency through a phone book from Cincinnati when I was nine years old, and told them I wanted to be an actor. My parents were like: “Well, I guess we’re going to have to do this with him or else he’s going to literally just take off and go and do it on his own!” So I went with my parents to meet an acting coach from New York, who said we should go to California for pilot season. And I convinced my parents to go out there. My mum and I got in our car and drove out to Los Angeles, and we stayed in a motel and started to do the movie business out there.
‘The acting coach had a connection to some small agencies, so I met with them, and one of them took me on. I started auditioning and was doing four or five auditions a day, running around town, and getting a lot of call-backs, but never really booking anything. And then finally I got a lead in a small TV movie called Miracle Dogs for Animal Planet. And, slowly, the credits started building from there.’
Those credits included roles in House Blend, hit US medical show ER and Wilder Days. A brief role in American Splendour was followed by a starring role in the CGI hit The Polar Express, featuring Tom Hanks. Talking about working with the Oscar winner, Hutcherson said: ‘To work with someone so talented and well respected like him really helped me grow as an actor. He was so down to earth and helpful in showing me what I should do. It was a great experience.’
He also worked with Will Ferrell in Kicking & Screaming and then performed voice duties for the animate fantasy Howl’s Moving Castle. He loved the former movie as it was a sports film, and that is something close to his heart: ‘My basketball team was the Beverly Hills high school recreational league champions. We were the most unlikely team of like no taller than six foot tall white guys in this league where there’s tons of 6 ft 10 ex-NBA players that played for the Nets, the Bulls – legit basketball players. And we won – I don’t know how still, but we did!’
His first live-action starring role saw him play a 10-year-old boy discovering girls in Little Manhattan. It was a huge role for him, and one he seemed to have enjoyed immensely, saying: ‘I think Gabe [his character] is probably a confused kid for several reasons, one being that his parents are divorced, yet they live together and are starting to date again. The other being that he’s just finding out about girls and that’s really confusing. It makes things hard for him, because things he knew or thought he knew are all changing on him.’
By 14 Hutcherson landed another supporting role alongside a comedy great in RV, starring Robin Williams. He said about his character: ‘I like playing Carl. He’s small for his age, so he tried to make up for it by being tough and going the gangster route. He listens to hardcore rap music and wears baggy clothes. Speaking of rap, Robin Williams is an expert rapper. One day the director Barry Sonnenfeld said: “Robin, go on a riff”, and he just started rapping. It’s so cool how he does it, because he just thinks of words and how they rhyme. It’s almost like he’s planned it, but he hasn’t. It’s amazing.’
Two more fantasy films followed – Zathura and Bridge to Terabithia, before another role in Firehouse Dog, of which Hutcherson explained: ‘It’s about this dog who is a movie star. He can do all these cool, awesome stunts for these movies. One day, he gets lost during a stunt and he comes into my life and starts to cause all these problems, and through the movie we start to build a relationship together.’
While the lead roles continue to come, Hutcherson was keen to broaden his range as an actor and played a supporting role in the drama Winged Creatures. Defending his decision, he said: ‘I’m always open to not necessarily playing the leading roles because I want to play roles that are the best character roles. And sometimes it’s not going to be a leading role. It’s going to be a smaller, supporting role. So, really, I’m open to doing something.’
He would star in two blockbusters – Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Cirque du Freak – both of which are covered in more detail in this book, as is his superb turn in drama The Kids Are All Right. That movie, much like Jennifer Lawrence’s turn in Winter’s Bone, cemented his status as one to watch.
And that status was further enhanced after landing the role in The Hunger Games. He told Vanity Fair that it wasn’t all plain sailing, and that in fact he had to wait for an excruciating period before hearing that he landed the part. ‘It was a very rigorous auditioning process. I’ve been a fan of the series for a little while now, and I went in and I met with Gary and Suzanne and a couple of the producers initially, and I did a little audition. It was great, and I really hit it off with them and felt really good about it. And then a couple weeks went by, which were brutal. And then they brought me in to do a screen test with Jennifer, where I read with her… then I had to wait for another couple of weeks or so before I found out that I got the part. And that was brutal, after doing a screen test. I think it was actually about a week and a half, and waiting to hear anything was just, like, ugh. Because I wanted it so badly, and all that time just lying there, waiting to see what happened, was pretty rough.’
When Hemsworth found out he finally got the part he said he was speechless, and couldn’t say anything on the other end of the phone. ‘This role is so me. I am Peeta,’ he explained. ‘His humility, his self-deprecating humour, the way that he can just talk to anybody in the room.
Talking about Hutcherson, Ross raved: ‘He kind of reminds me of a young Jack Lemmon. There’s this incredible versatility to him; he’s wise beyond his years and mature beyond his years, and there’s just such a natural ease to his acting. He’s so comfortable.’
Hutcherson added: ‘I don’t read a whole lot of books, because I’m usually busy reading scripts, but The Hunger Games books were so good that I literally read all three of them over the course of five days or something. I really powered through them. And while I was reading them, my mind was being blown as to how much I felt like I was like Peeta, and how I felt like I could relate. I’ve never really felt more right for a character in my whole life.’
Lawrence said about him: ‘Josh is so charming, and when you read the books about Peeta being able to manipulate anybody… I mean, Josh could get… well, I don’t know a metaphor except for off-colour ones!’
Suzanne Collins added: ‘People may get thrown, say, by the colour of an actor’s hair or something physical, but I can tell you, if Josh had been bright purple and had six-foot wings and gave the audition, he did I’d have been like: “Cast him now!” He was that good.’
When asked about how he thought the film would be received, Hutcherson told Vanity Fair: ‘At times when you’re adapting a book into a movie, you have to take certain creative liberties to bridge the gap between the two forms of media. And with Suzanne involved, I feel like that can really ease people’s minds who are worried about it being changed too much, because it’s staying true to the story.’
‘There are certain things – like, for instance, in The Hunger Games books it’s completely internal monologue with Katniss. She talks out loud, or you hear her voice in her head basically talking about how she feels and whatnot. In the movie, you can’t really do that without narration…You have to find a way to tell these things without using exposition or without using narration. I think we did that really well, and I think that people are going to be really happy with it. What’s cool too is that even though it’s a big, action studio movie, it had a really sort of indie feel on set, where we had a lot of creative liberty.’
Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Clove in the movie, said of Hutcherson: ‘Amazing! He is the perfect Peeta! He is as charming and funny as his character.’
Talking about the Hunger Games fans, he told MTV: ‘The fans of The Hunger Games, they’re die-hard. They’re the best fans in the world, so I’m really excited for them to see the movie. But for me, I stay away from a lot of that stuff, just because I don’t really look at it all that much. But I hear some things people are saying, and it’s pretty cool. It’s exciting to hear people are that interested in something you’re doing – it’s also a little nerve-wracking, – but I’m on board.’
When asked about how his life might change, he added: ‘I don’t know how you can be prepared for that kind of thing. People are always going to infer and draw their opinions. I’m ready for people’s opinions, that’s for sure.’
He added: ‘I know it’s going to be a big change, but I think if you go about it the right way, you can still have your privacy. You’ve just got to keep on trucking and make sure you’re always being true to yourself. Which is so funny, because that’s exactly what Peeta would say.’
He is certainly being true to himself, and fame doesn’t seem to have fazed him. He only seems to be hitting the headlines for the right reasons. Hutcherson adopted a rescue dog after it was cruelly dumped at an animal shelter, and was honoured at gay campaigners GLAAD’s media awards for his long-time advocacy of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups. He has been a huge supporter of gay rights thanks to his caring mother, and works closely with the Straight but Not Narrow campaign.
In 2008, Josh Hutcherson wowed cinema-goers with the 3D blockbuster Journey to the Centre of the Earth – a thrilling re-telling of the famous Jules Verne story.
Hutcherson played Sean, the nephew of Brendan Fraser’s main character, Trevor. The film sees Trevor teaming up with Sean to find his missing father, and their journey takes them on an amazing adventure involving dinosaurs, dangerous plants and spectacular landscapes.
Hutcherson said: ‘Our characters butt heads at first, but each proves useful to the other as the story progresses. They soon realise they need each other more than they ever imagined.’
Fraser said about the plot: ‘With Sean’s sudden arrival, Trevor is suddenly thrust into a dynamic where he feels the pressure to assume a paternal role, but, even though he is a college professor, he doesn’t really understand how to deal with kids. He can deal with college kids because they don’t listen to him in the lectures anyway.’
The hunky actor added: ‘People call movies a roller-coaster ride. This one actually was one! It’s hopping right off the face of the screen and you’re right in the thick of it. It did have that moment right there. Audiences have always shrieked and screamed with delight when we’ve been able to take the moving image to a place they just haven’t seen before and have an audience react to it in a way they just weren’t expecting.’
Anita Briem, the other star of the movie, commented: ‘It’s always better to be the only female on set, of course! No, no, it’s a very different experience, but in this, with Journey, it was wonderful to only have three characters in the movie. We had a great time where there were only three of us on set. We did a lot of action stuff, discovering the magical world of 3D together, so it was a great journey. I think it makes the relationship between the characters all the more intimate and interesting and the audience can get more invested.’
Fraser said he and Hutcherson got on so well, explaining: ‘We did lots of running about on treadmills, Josh and I. One of them was bigger than an 8 x 12 foot table. Now, my legs are long and his aren’t as long as mine, and they miscalculated our body weight together. The treadmill was motorised and they couldn’t get the motor up to speed - all the time it was just going “R-r-r-rwarrr”, way too slow!’
The film performed reasonably well at the box office, and with the end of the first film hinting that a sequel will feature the cast uncovering the secret of Atlantis, a franchise seemed ensured. However, the cast and the film’s bosses hadn’t actually confirmed a sequel, and because of projected costs the Atlantis idea sunk without a trace.
But fans of the first film would get a sequel eventually. New Nine Cinema bought Richard Outten’s original script Mysterious Travels, with an idea to tweak the story of an adventure to an uncharted island that is said to have influenced the works of Jules Verne (Mysterious Island), Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) and Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) so it formed the base of a sequel to Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
In May 2010, it was announced that Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was to be made.
Hutcherson was asked to be in the sequel, the only actor from the first one to be in the follow up. He was excited to be back, explaining: ‘It was kind of cool. I felt I had earned my stripes a bit, being the only one remaining from the first film. But it was a great experience. When I heard we were making a sequel, I got really excited and couldn’t wait to see what kind of crazy stories that they conjured up.’
When asked if he watched the first film to get back into character, he joked: ‘Not so much. I was 14 when I shot the first one, so I’ve grown up a lot myself. So I kind of re-invented the character a little bit. I think there’s a possibility that it was actually more fun to make than it is to watch! We shot down in Hawaii, so it was an amazing location. The whole cast and crew, we really bonded and got really close so we had a very good time making it. We got scuba certified at the beginning to do all the water action required. Vanessa (Hudgens, his co-star) was already certified because she’s such a gun, but we all had to get certified. They built this giant 100,000 gallon tank on a sound stage in North Carolina and that’s where they shot all the swimming sequences. They actually built the Nautilus inside the tanks – it was pretty intense. It was funny because the first time I saw the movie, as the water goes down in the Nautilus and we take our first breath, literally everybody took a big breath like ‘now I can breathe as well”!’
He added: ‘It was good, it was really fun. Sean was always a very adventurous guy, and he’s kind of been stuck in Ohio since the first film. He hasn’t been able to get out there and explore like he wants to. He has a lot to go through in this story – he’s sort of going crazy and he’s also dealing with the relationship with his stepfather. That was a lot more fun to me, there were a lot more layers to him. With a movie like this, I could pull a lot from my own experiences and my own adventurous side and turn that on full blast. But then there were also elements with the stepfather relationship where I didn’t have that issue, so I had to really rely on the script to help guide me to the right place.’
Hutcherson has starred with some big actors in his career, and this film saw him acting alongside Sir Michael Caine and former wrestling superstar Dwayne Johnson. He added: ‘Shooting with Dwayne and Michael was amazing. Dwayne is such a big physical guy that at first you could be easily intimidated. But then when you meet him he’s super down to earth, super nice, a really genuine person. He’s really a gentle giant, a manly gentle giant. And the legendary Michael Caine – he’s pushing 80 years old, but he had more energy than all of us. To see somebody like that at that age, who’s that accomplished, it just gives you a lot of confidence as a young actor to know that maybe one day you could be like that. Also, just watching him, seeing how he rehearses his lines a tonne – he really knew his words and was able to play with them, almost orchestrate them. That was really cool.’