Jennifer Lawrence is a hell of an actress. It might be a bit soon to say so about a thespian with only five years of experience to her name, granted, but if her performance in the dynamite indie flick Winter's Bone is anything but a fluke then it's well-warranted praise nonetheless. She plays the intrepid Ree Dolly, about whom you've heard quite a bit by now from director Debra Granik and costar John Hawkes, and those whispering that she'll be a force to be reckoned with come awards season aren't running their mouths off quite as much as you might think... though it would be wise to refrain from saying such things in her presence. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Jennifer Lawrence to Hollywood.Hi, Jennifer. There’s your seat. Your name’s on it.
[looks at the seat] Oh, ha-ha-ha! Also, if you’d told me “gullible” was on the ceiling? Would have looked.
There’s a lot of Oscar buzz about your performance.
I just yelled at my mom today for mentioning something like that. Thank you, though.
Well, you’ve been in the business for just five years, and a lot of newer actors are being noticed these days. What’s your take on that?
You mean, am I going for the art and the craft or for the fame?
Yeah.
I love the art and the craft and the fame is something that I’d accept. It’s something that I would put up with, and I’ll be honest: I couldn’t do anything else. I just wasn’t made for anything else, and I love it so much. I don’t understand the mentality of people who seek it. It’s something I’ll accept… I know what I’m doing; I’m not going to become famous and then get mad when I’m famous if people want to take my picture. I think that’s ridiculous. It’s like, “Okay, then don’t do movies!” I know it’s possible in the future, doing what I do, but it’s like saying, “I love being a doctor, but it has long hours.” Well, I love acting, but I give up my privacy.
How’d you get involved with Winter’s Bone?
Oh, I had to fight for it. I auditioned for it three times. I was up against, I think, everybody. I auditioned twice in LA and they said I was “too pretty” so I took a red-eye, which for the record will take care of that, and I flew to New York like a psycho and showed up to the New York auditions with icicles in my hair and I was like “Haaaiii, I’m baaaack!” And I think that once they saw that I had the exact kind of stubbornness and competitiveness that Ree has, well, I think they were kind of like, “Nobody else is going to be this stubborn or crazy enough to embark on such a journey.”
Did you feel any connection to the role through your Kentucky roots? I mean, I know you’re from Louisville, but still.
No. Well, there were some phrases I was familiar with. I am familiar with the very close family and the kind of hierarchy, but my life is very different from that which is portrayed in the movie.
I heard you shot at a real house in the Ozarks.
Yeah, there were no sets on the movie. Everything was real, and the family whose property we were shooting on? They were called the Laysons, and we spent a lot of time with them. I went up about a week before we started filming and spent a lot of time with them, and that’s how my little sister in the movie was cast: that’s [the actress Ashlee Thompson]’s house, and we became so close that we thought “Why would we go elsewhere to cast this when it’s right here?” In the book I have two little brothers, but we changed it.
What did she think about the experience of being in a movie?
I don’t think she liked it! We thought of it as make-believe, like make-pretend, but she didn’t like the camera. Which I thought was awesome. I was like, “You’re gonna be cool when you grow up!” because when I was a little kid I was like “Da-dun, da-dun-dun, where’s the camera!” [laughter] So I’m always fascinated with little kids who are shy. I always think they’re gonna be way cooler than I could ever be.
So you were a camera-whore?
Oh, my gosh. It—like, worrisome. [laughter]
When Debra was in here talking about the character she mentioned that Ree has to be a larger-than-life hero and have to have overly-heroic qualities, but at the same time when she was talking to her friend Gail toward the beginning she was very emotionally manipulative, which I thought was interesting.
Yeah, definitely. I think when you know each other inside and out—because these girls are practically sisters—you know their buttons, and Ree just knew what she had to do, so she did emotionally manipulate her, which I think is something we all do to get what we want or what we feel like we need. And Ree knows Gail’s buttons, so she knows how to get what she needs.
What do you think Ree’s relationship with her father was like?
Something I kept asking, and something I was confused about because I thought it kept changing, was when he left. And it wasn’t even that long ago, because it isn’t until we’re adults that we realize our parents are people and they’re not perfect. What’s sad is when you’re younger and you have a bad parent that is what’s normal to you, and that’s what you consider healthy, so I think if he’d left when she was little she would have idolized him. There’s a scene in the truck when Milton takes me to the blown-up trailer and Ree says “My dad’s known for not messing up batches; he’s known for knowing what he’s doing,” and she’s proud, almost. She’s talking about him cooking meth, and she’s bragging about him! So I think she’s still young enough—it was very important to keep the seventeen-year-old naivety to the character and not make her a perfect hero, not make her smarter than everyone else in the book, and I think she still has that seventeen-year-old naivety. Her dad is still someone she looks up to, amidst all of this, and she still has respect for her family.
Did Debra feed you the backstory as to how her mother got to be like that?
Everybody just said their own thing, and in the book it says that everything happened too—she just went into a shell. Everything happened too fast and too hard. The life became—[pointing to an interviewer’s glass] is that milk?
[laughter] Yes.
Okay, cool. I was just wondering.
It’s not anything else.
No, that’s awesome, I didn’t—“Is that meth?” [laughter]
So about the mother…
What? Oh, right, well, there are some women who go catatonic after they have babies and realize that they can’t be a mother, and they just kind of step back, I believe, and I think… it’s kind of like me with a math test. As soon as I’m faced with math I just freeze; I can’t write anything because it’s too overwhelming. It’s too much and I know I’m not going to be good at it. So that’s how I’ve always viewed Ree’s mother, but then I didn’t research it. I didn’t ask around too much because I never want to know more than my character does; it’s not helpful, and any time Ree is talking about her mom she’s not talking from a place of knowledge or authority. She’s always confused, and she always thinks, “Well, she keeps taking the pills, but they’re not doing anything.” So I honestly don’t think we know, really. Everybody has theories, but I at least think that Ree doesn’t know. Debra could probably give you the answer, but I didn’t want or need it at the time.
Winter's Bone is still playing in select theatres.
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