Jennifer Lawrence _ 60 Minutes Archive

Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most popular, highly paid actresses in Hollywood, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. And she's only 27. She's the youngest actor ever to be nominated for four Academy Awards. She won once for Best Actress. She can give dramatic performances or romp through madcap comedies, a range that gets her compared to Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. She took an unconventional path to Hollywood, a risky and surprising part of her story. We found a young woman with a fiercely independent spirit, living a life she could only have dreamed of growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. How did you get from Kentucky to the top of Hollywood? Desperation, an appetite, confidence, and ambition. You really wanted this? I knew if I just was given the chance that it would work. I just knew. But not even she knew it would work so well. For a decade in Hollywood, she has been defying odds and breaking barriers. At 21, she shattered the myth that women can't carry an action franchise. Her four Hunger Games movies earned almost $3 billion. She made three comedy dramas in as many years, playing unforgettable, flawed, resilient women. Tiffany, a young widow in Silver Lining's playbook. You are not a stand-up guy right now. If it's me reading the signs. You're reading the signs? Oh, OK. In American Hustle, she played Rosalind, a loony Long Island housewife. You fell in love. Don't you dare forget that part. We fell madly in love. And in Joy, she was a desperate mother-turned-entrepreneur. It's the only mop that you're ever going to buy, the best mop you're ever going to use. She earned Academy Award nominations for all three movies. I'm just the crazy slut with a dead husband. And took home the Best Actress Oscar for Silver Lining's playbook. Hey, Tiffany. But Jennifer Lawrence is not one to rest on her laurels. I am hard on myself. Why? I get paid a huge amount of money to be able to do what I love. So you're the one putting this pressure on you? Yes, too many people sacrificed so that I could be here. My parents changed their entire lives to support me. And I worked too hard to get here to be stupid about it. Lawrence's father owned a construction company. Her mother ran a summer camp. She told us her two older brothers pretty much ignored their annoying little sister. Did you used to play act when you were growing up? Oh, yes. I was constantly performing. We just didn't know that that meant I was an actor. I just thought, you know, I was a weirdo. But I understand that you pretended to have a problem with your leg at school. Who told you that? Oh, we've got our sources. In school, I told everybody I had a wooden leg. I like walked in a very consistent lap. Like, incredibly consistent. And when my mom came to get me from school, my teachers were like, it's awful. What happened to Jennifer's leg? And my mom was like, she does not. Her leg has not been amputated. I used to just invent stories just to invent them. She used zany antics to hide the fact she was a poor student, hyperactive, didn't fit in. She could drive her parents crazy. My parents were just, you know, they would go through periods of time where they just wanted me out of the house. And it was called a lockout. And so I'd go to the door and it was locked. And I'd be like, all right, I got to find something else to do until my parents are ready to deal with me again. But you were a handful. I was a handful. And I got it. We never fought about it. I've always been very self-aware about my annoyingness. She told us she felt lost in school and dreamed of becoming an actor. At 14, she badgered her parents to visit New York, where improbably she was discovered by a modeling scout, then given some scripts to read. I've struggled through school. I never felt very smart. And when I'm reading this script, and I feel like I know exactly what it would look like if somebody felt that way. That was a whole part of my brain that I didn't even know existed, something that I could be confident in. And I didn't want to let it go. What was it you wanted so much? It's so hard to explain. It was just an overwhelming feeling of, I get this. This is what I was meant to do. And to get people to try to understand that when you're 14 years old, wanting to drop out of school and do this, and your parents are just like, you're out of your mind. Did you finish up high school? I dropped out of middle school. I don't technically have a GED or a diploma. I am self-educated. Do you regret that? No, I really don't. I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do, and I don't want anything getting in the way of it. And even friends for many years were not as important to me as my career. I mean, from the age of 14. That stubborn determination landed her a role in a sitcom. When her parents saw her happy and focused for the first time, they agreed to accompany her to Hollywood. She never went back to school. Spell house. At 18, she wrangled the lead in a small, bleak, independent film called Winter's Bone. I don't know what to do. It was a breakout performance that earned her first Oscar nomination. There's not a lot of dialogue, but yet your presence fills the screen. It was really just feeling, believing, you know, in this situation, look at it through her eyes, and then that's always going to come across in your eyes, in your face, in your body language. That empathy, you can channel that into acting. Yeah, I mean, that's how I act. That's really my only tool, I think. No acting training? No. It's just empathy. Yes. Is that difficult or easy for you to do? It's easy. To just let go of Jennifer Lawrence? Yeah, because that's when you get the high. That's what I crave, that really getting lost into something, being almost possessed by another emotion. That's the adrenaline rush. That's the high that I can't live without. In her new movie, Red Sparrow, Lawrence stars as a Russian ballerina coerced into being a spy. It calls for nudity, something she thought she'd never do after she was traumatized when her most private pictures were hacked in 2014 and spread across the internet. Well, you told us you didn't like doing movies with a lot of sex in them, but Red Sparrow is all about sex. Why'd you change your mind? I read this script that I'm dying to do, and the one thing that's getting in my way is nudity. And I realized there's a difference between consent and not. And I showed up for the first day, and I did it, and I felt empowered. I feel like something that was taken from me, I got back, and I'm using in my art. And that hacking incident, did it just vaporize? It didn't vaporize, but I did feel like I took the power out of having my body taken from me. I felt like I took it back, and I could almost own it again. Are you worried that audiences won't see it the way you see it? I was, but it doesn't matter. It's my body, and it's my art, and it's my choice. And if you don't like boobs, you should not go see Red Sparrow. After making two movies a year since the age of 20, Lawrence is taking some time off. Aha! My whole silver! She wanted to go fishing, something she's always found relaxing, so we found a trout lake in Anaheim. Here, away from paparazzi and the pressures of celebrity, we found her playful and fully aware she's a 27-year-old in a high-wire act with the whole world watching. It's problematic for you to go out into the public? I just have to, like, prepare a little bit. It's always the one day that you look like crap, that a paparazzi just jumps out from behind a car, and you're like, oh, it looked so cute yesterday. The story will continue after this. Does the fame sort of lock you in? It does, but, like, my favorite activity is sitting by the fire drinking wine with my girlfriends. That's why you're coming. It's a girls' night with Phil. It's a girly, girly night. This is good. She invited us over to meet her three closest friends, Laura, Justine, and Lauren. They've known her since long before she became a movie star, and she says they keep her sane. So you're, like, her rock? Her foundation? We are her security guards. We are her main security. We're much more security. Yeah, emotional security guards. They tease her. No, she cannot dance. I told her the other day, I'm like, you know, your classic dance moves. She got so mad at me. She said, I don't do that. I don't dance like that. And then she goes, wait a second. This feels like home. When Jennifer left the room, her friends conspired. Should I bring him the self-portrait? It was a masterpiece she'd painted at 16. A self-portrait. Oh, my God, no. What is it? I did not know it was going to go that far. I mean, that was really bold. You literally jumped over me to get to this picture. God, talk about laughing therapy. That seems to be kind of central to who you are. Laughing? The laughing. You got to have it. I got to have it. It's her defense against the brutal cutthroat side of show business, which has been on conspicuous display recently, with shocking allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Lawrence has added her voice to the Time's Up movement and spoke to us about Harvey Weinstein. He produced her Oscar-winning movie, Silver Linings Playbook. Was he ever inappropriate? No, he was never inappropriate with me. But what he did was criminal and deplorable. And when it came out and I heard about it, I wanted to kill him. The way that he destroyed so many women's lives, I want to see him in jail. She was one of the first to speak out publicly about pay inequity in Hollywood. When it got out three years ago that her male co-stars in American Hustle had been paid more than she had, Lawrence wrote an essay blaming herself. Why not blame the studio? They're the ones who didn't pay you. Because I didn't fight hard enough. It was my own mentality that led me to believe that I didn't deserve to be paid equally. Would you do that again? No. You feel you know your worth now? I feel I know my worth and I feel like I work to keep it that way. Does that translate into money and power? Yeah. I can work with directors who I've admired for a very long time. And get a screenplay written. I have an amazing career build. But you do. There's a lot of risks too. This is right now. This is all very temporary. Hollywood is very fickle. What, you're like the flavor of the month? I could be. If the next few movies don't do well in the box office, I won't get paid the same. That's the way it works. If you can't prove that you deserve that number, then you're not going to get it. So it's very fickle. So I don't want to sound like I'm on a high horse because I might be on a tiny little Shetland pony in a month.