Sad Details About Jennifer Lawrence

As an Oscar-winning actor, Jennifer Lawrence's life may seem perfect to outsiders. However, the "X-Men: Apocalypse" star has faced a slew of difficulties throughout her life, and she hasn't shied away from sharing these experiences with her fans. 

Lawrence got her start in the entertainment industry after moving to New York as a teenager. "I had saved enough babysitting money and I was like, 'I'm going,'" she told NPR of the life-changing moment. "So [my parents] tried to find a nice balance between me kind of running away and being completely unsafe and having a little bit of supervision." Despite making such a huge move when she was just a teenager, Lawrence isn't a huge fan of going out to glitzy parties or bars. "I'm a total homebody," she says. "I'm always looking for excuses not to go out. I can now use fame as an excuse." 

From childhood traumas to glaring inequalities, join us as we explore some of the saddest details about Jennifer Lawrence's life.

Jennifer Lawrence may seem to exude confidence now, but that wasn't always the case. In fact, Lawrence struggled at school, which gave her a lot of social anxiety. In an interview with Madame Figaro, the "No Hard Feelings" star explained, "When my mother talks to me about my childhood, she always tells me that there was like a light in me, a spark that constantly animated me. When I entered school, that light went out." She elaborated, "We never knew what it was, a kind of social anxiety. Yet I had friends." Just like so many people, Lawrence had a hard time at school, and it threatened to dull her spirit altogether.

As for why she might have experienced anxiety at school, Lawrence told Madame Figaro, "I mostly think that I didn't feel smart because I wasn't a good enough student." She continued, "I thought that some people are stupid, but eventually get away with it and that I was one of them." The award-winning actor even went to therapy in an attempt to understand her feelings, but ultimately, the only thing that helped her overcome her anxiety was pursuing an acting career. Luckily, Lawrence appears to have found a stronger sense of self since leaving school, but her education was clearly a difficult time for her.

As well as experiencing social anxiety at school, Jennifer Lawrence continues to harbor a lot of feelings regarding the fact that she never got her GED. During an interview with Variety, Lawrence candidly explained, "I'm always very self-conscious of my intellect because I didn't finish school. I dropped out of middle school." While speaking on "60 Minutes," the "American Hustle" star also opened up about her decision to drop out of school, saying, "I am self-educated." Despite making the difficult choice to end her education early, Lawrence knows that it was the right thing to do in her life. "I wanted to forge my own path," she told "60 Minutes. "I found what I wanted to do and I didn't want anything getting in the way of it." 

While Lawrence's career has clearly come at a cost, it seems that fate had other plans for the future Oscar winner. In an interview with The Telegraph, the "Silver Linings Playbook" actor revealed that she was just 14 years old when she got the opportunity to pursue acting as a career. "I got discovered or whatever you want to call it and I loved acting and knew it was what I was supposed to be doing and thought I could be good at it," she told the publication. Unfortunately, the fact that Lawrence never got her GED obviously still weighs on the star.

After dropping out of school, Jennifer Lawrence made the bold move of heading to New York to pursue an acting career when she was just a teenager. However, this decision was less than glamorous for the future star, and she found herself living in some truly gross conditions while she attempted to become an actor. In an interview with NPR, Lawrence explained, "So I had a horrible apartment [in New York]; it was completely rat-infested. My brother, who was 18, went with me at first and my parents left us and we were both like, 'We're going to die.'"

Somehow, the "Causeway" star persevered, and despite literally living with vermin, she continued working towards her dream career. But this particular period of Lawrence's life was far from easy. "Night was horrible, that's when [the rats] all come out," she told NPR. "I wouldn't go to the bathroom." The experience also proved to Lawrence's father that she really wanted to work as an actor, and was willing to put up with having rats as roommates if it meant she could get closer to attaining her goal. Basically, Lawrence showed immense strength in the face of adversity, especially when it came to living with actual rats.

In February 2022, it was reported that Jennifer Lawrence had welcomed her first child with her husband Cooke Maroney. In September of the same year, Lawrence revealed to Vogue that her son's name was Cy, taking inspiration from one of her husband's favorite painters, Cy Twombly. However, Lawrence's journey to motherhood was far from easy, and while speaking to Vogue, the Oscar winner got candid about two miscarriages she experienced in the past.

When she was in her early twenties, Lawrence found out that she was pregnant and planned to have an abortion as she wasn't ready to be a mother. Before she could undergo the procedure, the actor experienced baby loss. "I had a miscarriage alone in Montreal," Lawrence told Vogue of the traumatic event. Years later, while filming the Netflix movie "Don't Look Up," Lawrence once again got pregnant. At the time, she was already married to her husband Maroney, and the couple planned to keep the baby. 

In her interview with Vogue, Lawrence explained that she sadly experienced another baby loss, and needed to undergo a dilation and curettage procedure, which removes tissue from the uterus following a miscarriage. In sharing her experiences with baby loss, Lawrence has undoubtedly helped people all over the world who are going through the same thing.

As an in-demand actor, Jennifer Lawrence regularly finds herself traveling for work, and this sometimes includes using private planes. While the mode of transport may seem glamorous to outsiders, Lawrence was severely put off flying privately when she experienced a terrifying event while in the air. During an interview with Vanity Fair, the "Red Sparrow" star revealed that during one particular flight, both engines failed, leaving the pilots scrambling to try to land the plane safely. "We were all just going to die," Lawrence told Vanity Fair. "I started leaving little mental voicemails to my family, you know, 'I've had a great life, I'm sorry.'"

The "Serena" star remembered seeing emergency vehicles on the ground below, presumably preparing for the worst. Miraculously, the plane landed without any fatalities, but Lawrence has, understandably, been scarred by the experience. "It made me a lot weaker," she told Vanity Fair. "Flying is horrific and I have to do it all the time." 

Jennifer Lawrence shot to international stardom playing Katniss Everdeen in the "Hunger Games" series, based on the books by Suzanne Collins. The franchise is set in a future world in which young people are forced to take part in the Hunger Games, a fight to the death with a focus on survival skills. While promoting the second installment in the series, "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," in November 2013, Lawrence opened up about the most challenging aspect of filming. But it didn't involve the training she had to undergo to play the part.

"I went deaf in one ear for months," she revealed during a panel discussion, per Vanity Fair. "But that wasn't actually physically challenging. It was just ear challenging because I got all of these ear infections from the diving and the water and all of that stuff. And then a jet from one of the cornucopia scenes punctured my eardrum." Surprisingly, making "Catching Fire" was responsible for Lawrence's hearing loss, which must have been challenging to deal with while making the successful film.

Playing the main character in the adaptation of a beloved book series placed a lot of pressure on Jennifer Lawrence. While fans were instantly enamored with Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in the "Hunger Games" series, the actor found herself struggling to contend with the fame she was suddenly experiencing. In October 2022, Lawrence made an appearance at the London Film Festival, where she partook in the "Screen Talk" series. She said of her time making the franchise, via Variety, "I think I lost a sense of control." 

She continued, "Between 'The Hunger Games' coming out and winning the Oscar [for 2012's 'Silver Lining Playbook'], I became such a commodity that I felt like every decision was a big, big group decision. When I reflect now, I can't think of those following years, [because there was] just a loss of control." As the focal point of so much attention, both as the lead in a hugely successful franchise and as an Oscar-winning actor, Lawrence no longer felt as though she was in control of her career. It's impossible to imagine the pressure Lawrence must have been feeling during this period of her life, but it's clear that she was hugely impacted by the major changes taking place.

While speaking to Vogue, Jennifer Lawrence revealed that the 2016 election caused a rift in her family, as she found herself disagreeing with the political persuasions of some family members. And when Trump won the election over Hillary Clinton, the cavern between Lawrence and her family only got bigger. "I've tried to get over it and I really can't," she told Vogue. "I can't. I'm sorry I'm just unleashing, but I can't f*** with people who aren't political anymore. You live in the United States of America. You have to be political. It's too dire. Politics are killing people." 

Since then, Lawrence has continually wrestled with the differing opinions between members of her family. "I don't want to disparage my family, but I know that a lot of people are in a similar position with their families," Lawrence told the publication. It seems that the "Garden Party" star has also continued to express her political opinions to her family, but she still finds herself feeling awkward when trying to approach the topic. "I broach the subject in the sense that I unleash text messages," she told Vogue. "Just: Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. They don't respond. And then I'll feel bad and send a picture of the baby." Like many people, the award winner's political views have become a point of contention at home, but the fact that she hasn't backed down shows just how important politics is to Lawrence.

In August 2014, Jennifer Lawrence was the victim of iCloud hacking when naked pictures of her were leaked on the website 4Chan. In 2018, the hacker, George Garafano from Connecticut, was sentenced to eight months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release and 60 hours of community service, via The Independent. However, the entire experience negatively affected Lawrence greatly, especially as her privacy was breached in a horribly public way. While speaking to NPR, Lawrence said of the leak, "Those pictures were incredibly personal to me — and my naked body I haven't shown on camera by choice — it's my body." 

She continued, "I felt angry at websites reposting them." Lawrence also got candid about the emotions she experienced following the leak, telling NPR, "I can't really describe to you the feeling that took a very long time to go away, wondering at any point who is just passing my body around. Who's got a picture of my body on their phone and is at a barbecue and looking at them. It was an unshakable, really awful feeling that after it healed a little bit made me incredibly angry." Understandably, Lawrence felt completely aggrieved at having been the subject of such a horrendous crime, which illegally exposed her private photos to the world.

After years in the spotlight, Jennifer Lawrence started to experience fatigue with the world she had become a part of. While speaking to Vanity Fair, Lawrence lambasted the period in her career in which several of her films failed at the box office or received bad reviews. "I was not pumping out the quality that I should have," she told the publication. "I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I'd gotten sick of me." 

In October 2020, Lawrence opened up about her decision to take a break from Hollywood during an appearance on the "Absolutely Not" podcast. "I realized that, you know, once you go into this machine ... it just doesn't stop," the actor explained. At some point, Lawrence seemingly realized that she wasn't happy, so she decided to make some changes. "I've lost track of the kind of films that I want to make and why I want to make them," she said on the podcast. "And I felt like my career had taken on a life of its own ... And I just had to make some changes and I did." Luckily, Lawrence knew that taking a break was the best thing for her life and career at that moment. But it must have been scary to feel as though she was simply a cog in the Hollywood "machine," losing her sense of self and her ability to make decisions for herself in the process.

During her 2021 interview with Vanity Fair, Jennifer Lawrence broached the subject of disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who was accused of sexual harassment and assault by multiple women, via the BBC. As noted by Vanity Fair, Lawrence was named in a lawsuit against Weinstein, with an anonymous actor claiming that the producer had alleged, "I slept with Jennifer Lawrence and look where she is; she has just won an Oscar." Understandably, Lawrence was disgusted by this lie and the idea that Weinstein used her as an example of how she could allegedly help other women become famous. 

"Harvey's victims were women that believed that he was going to help them," Lawrence told Vanity Fair. "Fortunately, by the time I had even come across Harvey in my career, I was about to win an Academy Award. I was getting 'The Hunger Games.' So I avoided that specific situation." Lawrence's rising star seemingly saved her from Weinstein, but that doesn't mean she hasn't faced scary and inappropriate behavior while building a career in the entertainment industry. "I'm a woman in the professional world," she told Vanity Fair. "So it's not like I've gone my entire career with men being appropriate."

As one of the most famous actors in the world, Jennifer Lawrence is reportedly paid a huge amount of money for every movie she makes. However, the 2014 Sony leak revealed that Lawrence was being paid considerably less than her male co-stars, igniting a crucial discussion about equal pay. During an interview with NPR, Lawrence explained, "I figured if I had a voice I should use it in case there are other women out there that are not getting paid or not asking for money the way that they should be."

In the since-defunct newsletter, Lenny Letter, Lawrence also opened up about discovering she was paid less than her male counterparts to PBS. "I would be lying if I didn't say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight," she explained. "At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realized every man I was working with definitely didn't worry about being 'difficult' or 'spoiled.'" Lawrence's willingness to be candid about her own experiences dealing with inequality is hugely beneficial to anyone lacking equity in their own industry. Hopefully, the actor's decision to speak out will encourage change to happen across the world.