Jennifer Lawrence and Viola Davis’s “Actors on Actors” interview for Variety went viral on December 7, and one clip in particular sent Twitter into a frenzy. Lawrence was attempting to make a point about how gender roles in Hollywood differ—often unfairly—but one factual error had the entire internet yelling “BS.”
“I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work, we were told,” Lawrence says to Davis, who murmurs in agreement. “Girls and boys can both identify with a male lead. But boys cannot identify with a female lead. And it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every single one of those beliefs and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies.”
"We were told girls and boys could both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead," Jennifer Lawrence says of taking on the role of Katniss in #TheHungerGames. https://t.co/TqYPwDLCC4 pic.twitter.com/1qyqqkh8aX
— Variety (@Variety) December 7, 2022
Now, it is not true that Hunger Games was the first action movie with a woman lead. Sigourney Weaver, who played the lead character in Alien, appears to be the actor cited in the most angry quote-tweets. Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill also came to mind.
Jennifer Lawrence proclaiming she was the first woman to ever be the lead in an action movie…
Clearly she never saw Sigourney Weaver’s Alien franchise pic.twitter.com/mpAWydxnQT
— David Leavitt (@David_Leavitt) December 7, 2022
“Now how Jennifer Lawrence gon sit up here and say there wasn’t a female actress in an action movie until her in Hunger Games,” reads one popular tweet. “So what was Pam Grier, Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman and Mila Jovovich doing?”
Now how Jennifer Lawrence gon sit up here and say there wasn’t a female actress in an action movie until her in hunger games….. so what was Pam Grier, Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman and Mila Jovovich doing? pic.twitter.com/oLi8XNxT1x
— 💫 (@heyjaeee) December 7, 2022
The fact that men play the lead character in most action movies, or that Hollywood bigwigs are often skeptical that female-led films can attract a male audience, is hardly a wild leap—whether or not Hunger Games did it first. And Lawrence did have her defenders among the commentariat. “Everyone’s dragging J-Law for this, but it’s pretty clear she’s sharing (with great derision) what was told to her and her team by studio execs, not what she thought at the time,” reads one tweet.
Look, I’m not saying that Jennifer Lawrence quote isn’t funny, but the fact that everyone is like “oh yeah what about this very specific handful of female led examples of action movies that are decades apart” sort of feels like maybe that isn’t the slam dunk they think it is.
— Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) December 7, 2022
Stay Connected , follow us on: Facebook: @creebhillsdotcom, Twitter: @creebhillsblog, Instagram: @creebhills, Pinterest: @creebhills Telegram: creebhills
To place an advert/sponsored post on our site, contact us via [email protected]
