As one of the most popular, not to mention bankable, stars in Hollywood, Jennifer now finds herself in the luxurious position of being able to cherry-pick from the finest roles that come her way. While other actresses her age fight to get themselves noticed by casting directors, she is inundated with acting offers and product endorsement contracts on a daily basis, but she is just as happy to turn many of them down. Unconcerned by money, she takes great care to make considered choices that are good for her long-term career.
Deep down, she is not truly interested in raising her profile by attending parties, or even key industry events, preferring to focus on her work. At the start of 2015 Jennifer even ducked out of the high-profile Golden Globes and Academy Awards, instead choosing to spend the awards season filming on the East Coast.
Some commentators suggested at the time that she was avoiding Gwyneth Paltrow, who made a glamorous appearance at the Golden Globes, presenting the Best Actor Award to Eddie Redmayne for his role as Professor Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
The same night as the Golden Globes took place, Jennifer was focusing very much on her career – she was spotted dining with crew from her film Joy, released December 2015, at the popular Bricco North End restaurant in Boston. According to Bricco’s PR rep, Nicole Russo, the star ordered the branzino fish and was ‘down to earth and nice to the staff’.
She was in the city for much of the spring of 2015, working on her third project led by Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle director David O. Russell. It seems hard to imagine now that have such a successful working partnership that the director has since confessed he was not at all impressed by Jennifer on first meeting her at an American Film Institute lunch several years earlier.
‘She looked kind of like an Orange County girl,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. ‘All dressed up in a white dress with big hair, with high heels. And I was like, “Who is that? That’s the girl from Winter’s Bone?” I said, “Wow, she doesn’t look anything like that.” Then [later in 2011], she did a Skype audition that blew me away.’
That audition would win the actress the role of Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook – and ultimately an Oscar. Reunited once again in 2015, Jennifer and Russell were working together on Joy, a film which tells the true story of Joy Mangano, a struggling single mother living on Long Island, who found great success as an unlikely businesswoman when she created the Miracle Mop.
A statement released by 20th Century Fox regarding the upcoming film, read: ‘Written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker, David O. Russell, Joy is the emotionally compelling and often comedic journey of a woman who triumphed over personal and financial challenges by inventing the Miracle Mop, which she sold on QVC and went on to become a hugely successful entrepreneur.’
The movie also saw Jennifer reunited with her former co-stars Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. But she was forced to publicly deny allegations that she and her director got embroiled in a huge argument on set. She took the highly unusual step of using her official Facebook page – which she hardly ever updates personally – to address reports that they had been heard shouting at each other, writing: ‘Hey guys! It’s Jen! I know I don’t go on here a lot because I can barely work email but there’s been a terrible rumour going around the last twenty-four hours so I wanted to clear it up.
‘David O. Russell is one of my closest friends and we have an amazing collaborative working relationship. I adore this man and he does not deserve this tabloid malarkey. This movie is going great and I’m having a blast making it!’ she declared.
The actress’s announcement came after a source told TMZ that she and Russell were loudly screaming and swearing at each other on set. The website alleged that the argument began because Jennifer was unhappy with how he was directing a scene. But producers told TMZ that the screaming – which apparently scared onlookers – was simply method acting as he was helping Jennifer to get riled up before they shot a scene in which she had to lose her temper at another actor.
TMZ also alleged that Jennifer had invited studio boss Harvey Weinstein on to the set to discuss the problem, but that Russell had ordered him to leave as soon as he reached her make-up trailer. Later it emerged that the meeting had been pre-arranged, and was nothing to do with the supposed argument. It was also confirmed that both actress and director were aware that Weinstein was due to visit, and that he went to see Jennifer to discuss a project with her for an hour, also presenting her with a handbag from his girlfriend’s fashion label, Marchesa.
Meanwhile, Fox 2000’s representative confirmed that Russell had an argument with a different Fox executive, but denied reports that he made the woman cry. And the head of the production company Annapurna Pictures also weighed in on the feud: ‘The only thing happening on set between David Russell and Jennifer Lawrence is an extraordinary collaboration,’ explained Megan Ellison. ‘One I’m proud to be a part of.’
Either way, the long-running and fruitful artistic relationship between Jennifer and Russell looked set to continue, although it was not the first time he had allegedly argued with an actor in one of his movies. He famously fell out with George Clooney on the set of 1999’s Three Kings – they criticised each other’s work openly, and even got into a physical fight.
Footage also surfaced in 2004 of the director and Lily Tomlin screaming at each other while working on I Heart Huckabees – with Russell knocking over props and Tomlin swearing at him. The actress told the Miami New Times three years later: ‘I love David. There was a lot of pressure in making the movie – even the way it came out, you could see it was a very free-associative, crazy movie, and David was under a tremendous amount of pressure. And he’s a very free-form kind of guy anyway.’
A couple of months later, however, Russell’s reputation was further damaged in a spate of leaked emails sent between journalist Jonathan Alter and the director’s brother-in-law, Sony CEO Michael Lynton. In the emails, Alter enquires as to the company’s future plans with the director: ‘Are you guys doing anything else with him?’ Alter asks. ‘I know he’s brilliant but we have someone on our show who worked closely with him on American Hustle and not only are the stories about him reforming himself total bullshit but the new stories of his abuse and lunatic behavior are extreme even by Hollywood standards.’
Alter brought up the feud with George Clooney, adding: ‘Apparently he behaved on The Fighter but acted so crazy on Hustle that it’s another Clooney situation where a lot of people won’t work with him again.
‘He grabbed one guy by the collar, cursed out people repeatedly in front of others and so abused Amy Adams that Christian Bale got in his face and told him to stop acting like an asshole.
‘He treated the crew like shit, demanded his own bathroom at all times and frightened people, as he famously had on Three Kings.’
Whatever the rumours regarding the talented director, he and Jennifer have clearly struck up a prolific and fruitful professional relationship which has already spawned two fantastic films in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle – and more is on the horizon.
Joy was expected to go head to head with Sandra Bullock’s rival biopic of another groundbreaking woman, Tupperware promoter Brownie Wise, who famously inspired housewives to earn their own money through Tupperware parties. Both she and Joy Mangano were trailblazing businesswomen who reached the top of their professions through hard work, talent and charisma. By coincidence, their unusual life stories were being brought to the big screen in separate films, which earlier in 2015 was being billed as the Battle of the Domestic Goddesses.
Bullock’s film is based on the book Tupperware Unsealed, written by Bob Kealing, in which he explained how Earl Tupper developed the food storage containers, applying for a patent in 1947. Tupper was at a loss as to how to market the products and discovered Wise, a divorcée and mother, who had a prodigious talent for selling and was a ‘dazzling, intelligent and outgoing woman’. In the postwar baby boom she set up parties for stay-at-home mothers, showing them how to ‘burp’ the lid to force air out of the colourful bowls and create a vacuum. Sales took off, as previously women had had to resort to putting shower caps over dishes to prevent food from spoiling. Throughout the 1950s, thousands of women became Tupperware hostesses, rewarded with incentives that ranged from sets of steak knives to Cadillacs and mink coats. In 1954, Wise was the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week magazine, when the company’s estimated sales had reached $100 million.
But Tupper came to resent his employee’s success; in 1957 Wise was fired from the multimillion-dollar company she had helped build. She held no company stock and was given a pay-off of a year’s salary of $30,000. Afterwards she tried – and failed – to start a cosmetics company, dabbled in property and had a pottery studio. In 1992 she died at the age of seventy-nine.
‘She was one of the most important businesswomen of the twentieth century, the prototype for all these Facebook and Google women who are leaning in,’ wrote Kealing. ‘I’m glad she will finally get the recognition she deserves.’
Joy Mangano’s rags-to-riches story is equally uplifting. The former waitress used her own savings to develop a mop that could be wrung out without the user getting their hands wet. In 1990 she made 100 mops and sold them to shops in Long Island. She sold a further 1,000 mops to the QVC shopping channel, on condition that she would take them back if they did not sell. The mops moved slowly but when Mangano went on air to sell the product herself, she sold 18,000 mops in twenty minutes. Today, they still sell by the million.
The blonde and bubbly Mangano also invented Huggable Hangers, which save space in wardrobes, and she broke a selling record on the Home Shopping Network in 2010 by selling 180,000 of her Forever Fragrant air fresheners in a single day.
She sold her company, Ingenious Designs, to HSN and now works there as an executive. Her daughter, Christie Miranne, told the Observer that her mother was ‘excited and honoured’ to be portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence. ‘She’s worked really hard all her life. We’re all looking forward to seeing the film. It’s going to be quite an experience,’ she said.
Some critics are sceptical that the two women’s life stories, which include their complicated love lives, will be strong enough to draw audiences but others believe they will be hits, with cinemagoers weary of non-stop action and fantasy films.
Jennifer, meanwhile, seemed to settle into life in Boston, and was spotted trying to live life as normally as any Hollywood actress could. She went shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, and somehow managed to slip unnoticed into a Flywheel exercise class: ‘She normally sneaks in the back door, walks into class late after the lights go down, and sneaks out early before they go on,’ a source told People magazine. She attended the class with her assistant, and even brought her dog Pippi, who waited patiently outside the class. ‘When she brings her dog, which she has done a few times, her bodyguard watches him,’ added the source.
From Boston the production moved on to Wilmington, Massachusetts, where Jennifer was spotted filming alongside her co-star Édgar Ramírez. And she told friends she was delighted to be teaming up with Bradley Cooper once again, as the smouldering chemistry between the pair was undeniable and had delighted critics in their previous movies.
Jennifer had also formed a close friendship with Bradley’s then girlfriend, British model Suki Waterhouse. Bradley and Suki first met at the 2013 Elle Style Awards in London: ‘We were introduced and hit it off almost immediately,’ the model told Rollercoaster magazine. ‘We were dancing at the after-party, and he asked me if I fancied going to a club. We went to Cirque le Soir in London – and he’s a ridiculously good dancer.’
Suki struck up a friendship with Jennifer, and together the two women went to watch Cooper’s Broadway debut in The Elephant Man in December 2014.
In the revival of Bernard Pomerance’s drama at the Booth Theatre, Cooper played Joseph Merrick, a nineteenth-century British man who becomes the star of the travelling freak show circuit. A fellow theatre-goer excitedly tweeted during the performance: ‘Jennifer Lawrence is sitting across the row from us at The Elephant Man’, with several shocked face emojis following it. And Jennifer’s appearance at the theatre sparked speculation that she might have plans to take to the stage herself, if her filming commitments would allow it.
Although the two women appeared quite friendly that night, it has also been reported that Jennifer was a ‘little jealous’ of Suki. A source told gossip website Radar Online: ‘When Bradley and Jennifer made Silver Linings Playbook and Serena together they were inseparable. But now Bradley has been spending his free time with Suki, and she feels like she’s lost her partner in crime.
‘They haven’t been hanging around each other as often as they used to.
‘Bradley flew Suki over from London to Boston and he took her on a tour of the city. Then, he flew to Paris to see her the moment he had a break in filming.
‘Because he’s spending all his free time with Suki, Jennifer’s only really seen Bradley on set and she’s grown a little jealous about it.’
Bradley and Jennifer had been forced to deny rumours they were dating, but it was not the most convincing denial as he claimed Jennifer was too young for him – before going on to date Suki, who was even younger!
Jennifer had previously claimed she was tired of trying to arrange dates for Bradley. ‘I feel like all I’ve been doing lately is setting him up,’ she said. ‘I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna save time and just get you a booklet with pictures of my friends. You just go through and pick them out, because this is getting exhausting.”’
And while she kept away from the Oscars in 2015, Bradley took Suki as his date, following his nomination for Best Actor in American Sniper. As well as losing out on the night to Eddie Redmayne, he also had to put up with Suki feeling jealous about another of his gorgeous female friends. According to OK! magazine, Bradley’s girlfriend had some negative feelings towards actress Sienna Miller, who made a glamorous appearance at the Academy Awards, looking stunning in a black Oscar de la Renta dress.
A source told the magazine: ‘Suki is so fed up with Bradley’s relentless gushing about Sienna’s talent, it has caused some huge fights. Suki told him that if she walks by Sienna at the Oscars, she is going to tell her to stay away from her man.’
Since Bradley had been romantically linked to Sienna in the past, it was perhaps understandable that Suki should be annoyed, especially as the couple hardly spent any time together in the run-up to the high-profile awards ceremony. However, the model refused to discuss their relationship. During an interview with Elle magazine she said: ‘I don’t talk about my boyfriend because it’s boring. At least, that’s what I decided to tell you when you asked. I’m not one of those girls who goes on about their boyfriends. I do think whatever I say will sound weird. But the truth is, if I start talking about him, I probably won’t be able to stop. And I don’t really want to talk about him, you know?’
But in April 2015 it emerged that Bradley had cooled his two-year relationship with Suki because she was not supportive of his career. Page Six claimed that he felt neglected during his Broadway stint in The Elephant Man between November 2014 and February 2015. The column also reported that a source close to the actor said that Bradley was upset that Suki chose not to spend Valentine’s Day with him in New York, preferring instead to enjoy a girls’ weekend away in Texas – sharing on Instagram a series of photos of herself in bikinis.
Bradley also had professional problems. In the spring of 2015 fans were eagerly anticipating the delayed release of Serena, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Ron Rash and directed by Oscar-winner Susanne Bier. Jennifer and Bradley play a couple whose happiness is almost ruined when Lawrence’s character finds out that her husband already has a child. The film’s release was delayed for almost two years while it languished in the editing suite and when it finally came out in March 2015, it was to terrible reviews.
The movie, set in the early 1920s, follows two newlyweds, George and Serena Pemberton (Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence), who found a timber business in the North Carolina mountains. Serena proves herself a formidable outdoors-woman, hunting rattlesnakes and even saving a man’s life in the wilderness (a rough-and-tumble role harking back to Jennifer’s breakout role in Winter’s Bone). Yet their marriage begins to unravel as Serena discovers George’s hidden past and is forced to face up to an unchangeable fate of her own.
Although the film itself was slated, some critics praised Jennifer’s performance, and credited Susanne Bier with bringing out the best in her. ‘Lawrence constructs a well considered and thought out performance that makes sense of the character’s extremes,’ wrote the Houston Chronicle. ‘At times, you can feel Bier relishing what this actress is capable of, as when she films Lawrence in close-up, reacting to bad news in one unbroken take. Her face is still, then she starts to cry, and then her face gives way to sobbing. Very few people are capable of doing this with a camera two feet from their face. Even fewer could make you want to watch.’
According to Sony’s head of acquisitions Joe Matukewicz the film was ‘very disappointing’. He wrote in a leaked email to his boss: ‘It’s set in a logging town in the Smoky Mountains of the 1920s. Cooper runs a timber company, marries Lawrence, but after she loses their unborn baby she mentally unravels, having three locals killed who she perceives as threats. Even with this star power, the bleak story, setting, tedious pacing and tonally challenged film make it one we should steer clear of. Not only because the reviews will be rough, but also for the talent relationships.
‘It’s probably best to let it go.’
The website Zimbio also slammed the film as ‘a yawn’, saying: ‘The movie’s best moments feature Lawrence in emotional overload. One, where she slowly breaks down after the miscarriage, is filmed in tight close-up and will send chills down your spine. This is what’s so frustrating. Serena should be full of moments like this, but Lawrence is only given half a character.
‘Meanwhile, Bier lays it on with heavy strings and slow motion. This passes for character development. The long, soulful looks between Lawrence and Cooper add little and the film’s PG-rated sex scenes are a yawn.
‘Filmed mainly in Prague, the production design is stellar and vivid, a hard vision of a worker’s life. And it seems like the environment affected the film.
‘Apart from Lawrence, the actors all look like they’d rather be home in bed, like they knew they were working on something that wasn’t working.’
Despite the mixed reviews that plagued Serena, Jennifer and Bradley were still widely considered to be box-office gold and even though this particular film proved a rare flop, it is safe to say that Jennifer’s future in the movie business is guaranteed, since she is already set to be busy for years to come.
She forged a strong bond with the director and agreed to reunite with Susanne Bier again in the movie adaptation of Claire Bidwell Smith’s memoir entitled The Rules of Inheritance. As well as starring, Jennifer also intended to tackle producing for the first time in the film about coping with grief and the challenges that come with losing a loved one.
At the time of writing she was also set to take lead roles in the movies Burial Rites, East of Eden, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 and The Ends of the Earth. For both Burial Rites and East of Eden – a remake of the 1955 film starring James Dean – she was teaming up again with Hunger Games director Gary Ross. In the second adaptation of a John Steinbeck’s seminal novel East of Eden she was set to star as Cathy Ames, who murdered her parents by setting fire to their house while they slept.
In Burial Rites Jennifer was to play a woman charged with murder who is sent to a remote farm while she awaits execution.
For The Ends of the Earth, she was to be reunited with the director of the third and fourth instalments of the Hunger Games franchise, Francis Lawrence, for a fact-based love story about a powerful oil tycoon who loses everything after being caught up in a torrid affair.
And she and Francis Lawrence had plans to team up again for a romantic drama called The Dive. According to The Hollywood Reporter the film, which Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron has been developing since 2002, centres on the relationship between true-life figures Francisco ‘Pipin’ Ferreras and marine biologist Audrey Mestre.
Jennifer will play Audrey, a scuba diving enthusiast who became interested in the sport of free diving (which involves diving to the greatest depths on a single breath of air) in the mid-nineties. She trained under, and later married, the legendary free diver, Pipin. In November 2002, while attempting to break the world record dive of 531 feet set earlier by her husband – without breathing apparatus – Audrey encountered an issue with a lift balloon. Pulled from the water nine minutes later, efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful and she died at the age of twenty-eight.
Two very different accounts of the tragedy have since emerged. In 2006 Pipin was directly blamed for his wife’s untimely death by dive co-organiser Carlos Serra in his book called The Last Attempt, amid allegations the record attempt failed to adhere to standard safety procedures. However, the film follows the title of Pipin’s own 2004 book, The Dive: A Story of Love and Obsession, which takes a different view.
Jennifer also planned to take on more producing later in the year, and agreed to simultaneously produce and star in the film of The Glass Castle. In an interview with The Associated Press she said that her mother Karen had encouraged her to read the gripping life story of former gossip columnist Jeannette Walls.
Jennifer said: ‘I’ve always wanted to produce, because I remember when I would read these incredible scripts that would never see the light of day and then I’d drive through Westwood and see some of the crap that was coming out. And I was like, “What is going on in the world?”
‘So I’ve always wanted to produce. And Glass Castle being my first project is perfect because I was just so moved by that book. My mother is like the lucky charm with these kinds of things. She read Winter’s Bone and Hunger Games and when I read The Glass Castle I thought it was amazing, so we found Gil Netter, the producer who had the rights to the book. He and I started talking and now we are developing. We have a director and a writer and it’s getting going.’
And in 2016 Jennifer is scheduled to reprise her superhero role in X-Men: Apocalypse, playing the role of Raven/Mystique again. But she revealed that it would be her final appearance in the sci-fi series, having taken over the role from Rebecca Romijn. Speaking at a screening of Serena in March 2015, Jennifer confirmed: ‘It is my last one, actually.’ Nicholas Hoult had also indicated that the film would be his last outing as Beast, but he would continue if he had the choice.
Speaking to E! Online, Jennifer’s former boyfriend revealed: ‘This is the last one I’m signed up for. The first one did so well and Days of Future Past got received so brilliantly. It’s like, “Wow, people really want to see the films”, and the best thing is it’s a great crew and cast to work with and he’s a fun character. I have a good time playing him so I’d keep making them.’
After Jennifer announced she would be stepping down, and leaving the X-Men franchise for good, director Bryan Singer started the search for another main female lead. And in April 2015 he cast Olivia Munn to play the ninja telepath Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse. He made the announcement via Instagram, with Hollywood insiders immediately predicting Munn’s career would rocket just as Jennifer’s had done after appearing as Mystique in X-Men: First Class.
It was also reported that Jennifer and Chris Pratt – star of Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie – were in talks with Sony Pictures to board the upcoming sci-fi drama Passengers.
In fact Passengers has been in development for years and has yet to lock down its leads. Back in 2013, Rachel McAdams and Keanu Reeves were the rumoured stars, with Game of Thrones director Brian Kirk at the helm. Before that Reese Witherspoon was in talks with the studio. All three actors have since dropped out.
‘Passengers is set on a spacecraft in the future, with thousands of passengers making an interstellar voyage to a distant new planet,’ reported industry magazine Variety in early 2015. ‘One passenger awakens from cryogenic sleep ninety years before anyone else and decides to wake up a female passenger, sparking the beginning of a love story.’
According to Variety, Morten Tyldum, who was behind Oscar-nominated drama The Imitation Game (2014), was hoping to land the directing job. Tyldum had been nominated for an Oscar and a Directors Guild award for his work on The Imitation Game, the Second World War period drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as code-cracking hero Alan Turing.
Industry insiders hope that Passengers will echo the huge box-office success of recent space dramas such as Interstellar (2014) and Gravity (2013) – the latter also being the recipient of seven Oscars.
Around this time Jennifer was being linked to so many films that there was widespread surprise that she was not considered for Paul Feig’s upcoming remake of the Ghostbusters’ movie, this time with an all-female cast.
True to form, Jennifer made a joke about the perceived snub: ‘I didn’t know there was a Ghostbusters 2. Who’s in 2? Are you serious? Oh, my God! Sequels are never as good,’ she said, bursting into laughter when she realised that she was actually promoting a sequel at the time (the sequel being Mockingjay: Part 1).
But Jennifer was too busy to dwell on the one that got away; she was also due to team up with Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg for a biopic about a veteran war photographer. Warner Bros. Studio was hammering out a deal for her to star in the film version of the memoir It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.
Lynsey Addario penned the memoir about her assignments in conflict zones, including Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to Deadline, big-name producers were battling for the rights to the story after extracts were published in The New York Times Magazine. Bidders included Working Title Films, who had Reese Witherspoon attached to the lead role, and Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), who wanted the movie for Natalie Portman. The Weinstein Company was also bidding, with George Clooney and Grant Heslov involved. Margo Robbie, too, was reportedly hoping to buy the rights to the film.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist had met with various hopeful bidders and impressed them all with details of her personal and professional life. Addario has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo and Haiti and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek and National Geographic.
Warner Bros. eventually won the rights, casting Jennifer as Addario, who admitted she was concerned about Hollywood’s tendency to sensationalise: ‘That’s why I went to great lengths to figure out who I would option the book with. I feel pretty confident about the team I’ve ended up going with. There’s no guarantee it will be exactly the truth, but the goal for the movie is to tell people what it is that we do as journalists, what our lives are really like, and what the lives of the people we cover are really like.
‘I think there’s a great disparity between what people perceive and what the reality is, and if we can reach a much larger public with a Hollywood film, then let’s try it.’
With an upcoming movie, Addario is now a wealthy woman, but Jennifer was impressed to learn that she has no plans to give up her dangerous job. Addario told the British Journal of Photography: ‘It’s hard for me when people ask “Why do you do this work, why would you risk your life?” I don’t really have an intellectual answer, because anyone who does this work understands that it’s beyond them, it’s like a calling that overtakes you. The only thing I’ve come up with is, “It’s what I do and it’s who I am”.’
There have been rumours linking Jennifer to a Star Wars spin-off project, as well as hints that she is set to play a video game heroine in The Legend of Zelda. And on the subject of princesses, another suggestion was that she would replace Kristen Bell in Frozen 2, following the success of her song, ‘The Hanging Tree’.
And Jennifer is also being linked to future plans for a big-screen epic adaptation of The Odyssey being developed by Lionsgate films and possibly directed by Francis Lawrence.
She is even due to cash in on the opening of a Hunger Games theme park in Dubai. Lionsgate announced in April 2015 that it would be partnering Dubai Parks and Resorts to bring the film to life via a gigantic theme park scheduled to open in October 2016. Motiongate Dubai, a Hollywood-themed attraction, would feature Hunger Games-inspired attractions and retail facilities. The 4-million-square-foot facility is expected to attract more than 3 million visitors a year, and would include a live stage show and animation zone.
It was also reported that Jennifer would be playing Hearst publishing empire heiress-turned-activist Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped in 1974 by a student-led group called the Symbionese Liberation Army, who were campaigning for the release of black prisoners. In one of the most well-documented cases of Stockholm syndrome ever, Hearst was brainwashed into supporting her captors’ cause, going on to appear in the group’s propaganda videos and taking part in illegal activities. She changed her name to Tania and fashioned herself as a machine-gun-toting guerilla warrior. But she was eventually arrested after staging an elaborate bank robbery to support her newfound cause. She was put on trial and later pardoned by President Jimmy Carter.
CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has written a so-far untitled book about Hearst’s young life and 20th Century Fox is developing a screenplay with Jennifer in mind.
Critics suggested she would be perfect for the role since she had played a heroic warrior in Hunger Games, was emotionally vulnerable in Silver Linings Playbook and made a convincing sultry femme fatale in American Hustle.
If all this should come to pass, then it looks as though Jennifer will not be taking a break for a very long time to come.
Rolling Stone magazine declared Jennifer to be ‘The most talented actress in America’ and Time listed her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Elle announced she was the Most Powerful Woman in the Entertainment Industry, and she found herself ranked Number 1 on Ask Men’s list of the Top 99 Most Desirable Women of the Year.
As well as all her other acting awards, gongs and trophies, Jennifer also found herself ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the World’s Most Powerful Celebrities and the second Most Powerful Actress on the Planet – beating many more far more established actresses including the likes of Angelina Jolie to the top spot. She is now the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, just behind Sandra Bullock, whose career began two decades earlier.
Jennifer is also due to appear in the Guinness World Records for having scooped so many awards in such a short space of time.
And so, the question is, what next for the girl who went from a seemingly disastrous fashion photo shoot for Abercrombie & Fitch to a handful of little-known indie films to being known around the globe as the Girl on Fire in the most successful franchise of all time?
She has hinted that she would love to work behind the cameras: ‘I’ve always wanted to direct,’ she told Vanity Fair. ‘Ever since The Poker House. Lori Petty was directing and I was imagining being a director. I love filmmaking. I love acting, but I don’t feel married to being in front of the camera.’
Jennifer is already signed on to produce a few films, but before all that all she really wants is a break from her hectic schedule, which has seen her work back to back since she first found fame in 2008.
‘I want my life as normal as possible,’ she has said. ‘One of the dangers in the film industry is that things are too fast, aging. I do not want to burn the stages of my life.’
And with the coming years mapped out for her, it is hardly surprising that Jennifer said she would love to take a well-earned break from filming to get a rest, but with so many projects in the pipeline, it is unclear when this may come.
In some of her more revealing interviews, Jennifer has wistfully suggested that all she really longs for is to buy a house where she can actually spend more than a few days at a time and disappear off the radar. Being so instantly recognisable, the one thing she craves is anonymity and privacy; her dream is to simply vanish far from the intense glare of the public eye.
Until now she has managed to keep her feet firmly on the ground, in a refreshingly honest and candid way, but the demands on her time are relentless. She has said she misses being able to relax on the sofa, watching her beloved reality TV shows, and the freedom to ride horses as she did as a child.
Luckily she is surrounded by the strong bonds of her loving family, who do their best to ensure that she returns as often as possible to her childhood home where she can enjoy some peace and normality.
It was not so very long ago that she was enduring regular therapy sessions to tackle her crippling social anxieties and emotional disorders, so many would say time away from the intense grind of the Hollywood machine is essential before she breaks down, just as so many big name stars have done before her.
Paparazzi photographers and eager fans with camera phones hound Jennifer relentlessly and aggressively. Gossip columnists, magazine and TV shows speculate and dissect every dress she wears, every man she is seen with, and indeed every move she makes. She admits she does not feel at home in Los Angeles: one false step and it could all come crashing down around her.
Indeed she has said: ‘Louisville is actually really respectful. I can normally go out to dinner with my family and everybody is really nice about letting me have a nice experience. The only thing I’ll ever identify with as home is Louisville.’
She may still feel like the girl next door, but one thing is certain – Jennifer Lawrence is Hollywood royalty and as long as she continues to tread carefully, she seems destined to reign over her kingdom for many years to come.