Jennifer found herself forced to miss out on many of the celebrations enjoyed by the rest of the American Hustle cast due to her relentless back-to-back schedule of filming commitments, and David O. Russell has often leapt to her defence when she has been absent. During the filming of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, when she was stuck on location in Atlanta after the production endured setbacks because of icy storms, the director revealed how exhausted she was, adding that he was concerned about the intense demands on her time.
Russell commented that the Hunger Games bosses were working Jennifer like a slave. He told Confidenti@l at the Australian Academy’s AACTA Awards: ‘I’ll tell you what it is about that girl – talk about twelve years of slavery, that’s what the franchise is.’
However, he later apologised for his comments since there had been a backlash against him making a joke about slavery, which had been considered poor taste. He told MailOnline: ‘Clearly, I used a stupid analogy in a poor attempt at humour. I realised it the minute I said it and I am truly sorry.’
But explaining what he had meant by the remark, Russell went on: ‘I personally think they should give her a bit of breathing room over there because they’re printing money. But she’s a very alive person.’
And after her two Oscar nominations, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who funded Silver Linings Playbook, agreed that Jennifer needed a break after a very hectic few years of back-to-back filming: ‘She’s going to have a long break for a year where she won’t do anything,’ he told The Sun newspaper. ‘It’s been non-stop for her and she deserves a rest.
‘She signed on to do Hunger Games when she was young and wouldn’t have realised how much it would dominate her life. But she’s a professional and always will be. It’s been non-stop for her and she deserves a rest’.
But of course there was little chance of a break in Jennifer’s hectic diary, since she was more in demand than ever following her awards. She flew straight back to Atlanta to continue shooting the latest Hunger Games instalment, but production was halted in the wake of the sudden death in February 2014 of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Plutarch Heavensbee in the dystopian fantasy series.
Just forty-six years of age, he had been due to join the cast on set, but was found on the bathroom floor of his $10,000-a-month New York apartment by his personal assistant and friend, the playwright David Bar Katz, after he did not show up to pick up his children. Hoffman had recently separated from his long-term partner of fourteen years, the costume designer Mimi O’Donnell, and it quickly emerged that he had died from a drug overdose, leaving behind the couple’s children, Cooper, Tallulah and Willa, and an estimated fortune of $35 million.
The extent of his addiction to class-A drugs had not been fully known to his friends, who thought he had beaten his demons. At the age of twenty-two, the star had checked into rehab, battling addictions to alcohol and narcotics, but as far as Jennifer and the rest of the Hunger Games cast were aware he had replaced this addiction with an obsessive love of acting. The troubled father of three, who won an Oscar for Best Actor in Capote (2005), a film about the author Truman Capote, was known for throwing himself into his work to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. After filming wrapped on Capote he promised his partner that he would never become obsessed with another role in quite the same way.
But as a string of successful film offers came along, the party lifestyle took hold once more and he started to take drugs again: ‘It was anything I could get my hands on,’ he once said. ‘I liked it all.’
In the run-up to his untimely death, Seymour Hoffman had succumbed once more and in May 2013 it emerged that he had checked himself in for a detox programme after snorting heroin. Friends thought the ten-day treatment had been successful and he returned to work. But less than a year later he went on a desperate hunt for drugs on the streets around his New York apartment and died of an overdose of a deadly cocktail that included heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine. It was reported that he had a syringe in his arm and was surrounded by seventy bags of what was believed to be heroin, and twenty used syringes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the whole cast were on set when news of the tragedy broke, and filming was immediately drawn to a halt as they dealt with their grief.
Seymour Hoffman had been making both of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay movies back-to-back in the months leading up to his death, and spent the majority of his time on and off set with the stars and crew of the franchise.
His death came as a devastating blow to them all, and Jennifer was left emotionally distraught. Along with the rest of the cast, she issued a heartfelt statement in tribute. ‘Words cannot convey the devastating loss we are all feeling right now,’ she said. ‘Philip was a wonderful person and an exceptional talent, and our hearts are breaking. Our deepest condolences go out to his family.’
It was understood that Seymour Hoffman had completed almost all of his work on the series’ final installment, and had just seven days of filming left. The moviemakers were forced to use CGI technology to finish the last remaining scenes, which the actor had not been able to film.
As he had already finished shooting the first Mockingjay film, producers confirmed that they would not be recasting the role, and that the release of the films would not be delayed.
‘Philip Seymour Hoffman was a singular talent and one of the most gifted actors of our generation,’ production company Lionsgate said in a statement.
‘We’re very fortunate that he graced our Hunger Games family.
‘Losing him in his prime is a tragedy, and we send our deepest condolences to Philip’s family.’
As a mark of respect, production on the movie was briefly halted while the cast and crew mourned. Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence was careful to ease his leading lady back into filming without her co-star. He explained how they began to slowly move forward with the movie, with Jennifer and Liam Hemsworth being the first stars to return to the set in Atlanta, Georgia, within a few days of hearing the sad news.
‘We started very small, just one scene with Katniss and Gale [Liam Hemsworth] so there weren’t any extras around. It was just the two of them and not long days. We kind of eased everybody back into work. It’s a big cast too, so every time somebody who hadn’t been around for a while would come back it would bring it all up again.’
Seymour Hoffman played the leader of an underground military facility and former Gamesmaker, who recruited Katniss to help incite the citizens of Panem to take up arms against the autocratic Capitol and end the tyrannical reign of the cruel President Snow (Donald Sutherland).
Francis Lawrence compared the experience of working with his co-stars, saying: ‘It’s interesting when you work with somebody like Jen, she doesn’t talk about what she does. She just does it. It’s all instinctual and I think she even has a hard time talking about it; Phil is a completely different guy.
‘He likes to talk about things and he likes to keep talking about it and unlike a lot of other actors who like to talk about it and then nothing changes, he can actually change his performance. The way he would dig at a scene. There’s a scene with Phil and Julianne [Moore] and Jeffrey [Wright] sitting at a table [early in the film]. It was fascinating for him to just keep digging and digging, and to see the layers of nuance and subtext that were getting added. You can watch it in a way that’s different from a lot of actors because he’s talking about it as he does it.
‘Between takes, he’s asking questions out loud and talking to me or talking to Julianne and you can see it evolve and change. It’s amazing to watch.’
Some commentators felt Jennifer had been pushed back to work too soon following the tragedy, and in an interview with Empire magazine, she admitted that she was ready for a break: ‘It’s OK. It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘I get little breaks here and there. But on the last day of Hunger Games I’m going to turn my phone off for a year!’
And to add to her stresses, Jennifer found herself caught up in an unexpected legal wrangle when the makers of American Hustle were sued for $1 million (£630,000) over a 10-second quote from Jennifer about a microwave. In the film her character, Rosalyn Rosenfeld, sets the 1970s-style oven on fire by using tin foil and in the following rants claims the new-fangled gadget ‘takes all of the nutrition out of food’.
‘It’s not bullshit, I read it in an article by Paul Brodeur,’ she tells Irving, her husband (played by Christian Bale).
But Mr Brodeur, a real-life journalist who wrote about the possible radiation hazards of microwaves in the 1970s, said he never made that particular claim. He filed a lawsuit demanding $1 million in damages for defamation, saying the film attributes his name to a scientifically unsupportable statement about ‘taking nutrition out of food’, ABC News reported. The journalist also wanted Atlas Entertainment, Annapurna Productions and Columbia Pictures to remove his name from the film.
He believed a viewer could come away thinking he was incorrect and lacked knowledge about microwave radiation, thus damaging his career (the judge has since denied producers’ attempts to strike the lawsuit, meaning it will proceed).
American Hustle was loosely based on the FBI Abscam sting to catch corrupt politicians and businessmen. While Jennifer’s performance was widely praised following the film’s release in October 2013, it received mixed reviews. But thanks to it’s star-studded cast, the film proved a huge hit, raking in well over $250 million worldwide, as well as scores of prestigious awards including ten Oscar nominations. Whilst on the night the film did not actually win in any categories, it was a career step that pushed Jennifer into another level of public and media interest.