Jennifer Lawrence has done the awards circuit, the franchise grind, the indie comeback, and the press tour rollercoaster. She’s won an Oscar, led two billion-dollar film series, and even crawled through bushes while pregnant for her latest role. But after nearly two decades in the industry, she’s also familiar with a less glamorous Hollywood tradition: the flop. So how does she handle it when a movie doesn’t do business? Well, she has two memorable words for it.
The star of the upcoming Die, My Love recently sat down with IndieWire to discuss her 2025 movie release, a collaboration with Robert Pattinson and director Lynne Ramsay that’s already earning her Oscar buzz. But amid all the prestige talk, Lawrence got candid about something a little less shiny, and that’s how it feels when one of her movies crashes and burns. Her answer is classic J Law:
It feels extremely violating.
The Hunger Games series veteran star didn’t sugarcoat the emotional toll a flop can have on her. She then explained that a box-office failure cuts deeper than most people realize. She continued:
There are so many pieces of me in [a character]… it feels so private, and it’s insane to me that it’s just inherently part of the beast that eventually you give it to the public to rip into, like a zebra carcass to a pack of hyenas.
That is a vivid visual that is hard to shake. The American Hustle actress explained that even before the reviews drop or the box office numbers hit, the dread creeps in. Despite her track record, each release still feels like handing over something deeply personal and watching it get torn apart. It’s a vulnerability she’s learned to live with, but not necessarily one she enjoys.
And yet, the Oscar winner still swings for the fences. Her most recent leap is Die, My Love, an intense, impressionistic psychological drama that’s a book-to-screen adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel. Produced by Lawrence’s company, Excellent Cadaver, the film follows a mother unraveling in the grip of postpartum psychosis. The Winter’s Bone star shot the movie while four months pregnant, a fact she says actually helped her tap into the animalistic instincts of the role.
Still, the former X-Men performer’s approach to acting is far from the tortured-artist method. She said she had fun on set, loved collaborating with Ramsay, and even joked about co-star (who she fed trash food) Pattinson’s tendency to over-prepare. He’d spend weeks obsessing over a scene, while she’d learn her lines on the day, only to then nail it in two takes.
It’s that sharp, self-aware blend of humor and grit that’s kept Lawrence a fan favorite, even when a project doesn’t hit. And while she may be bracing for hyenas every time a film drops, she also seems oddly at peace with the risks.
The truth is, while Jennifer Lawrence has had a few box-office stumbles (Passengers and X-Men: Dark Phoenix come to mind), her filmography is packed with hits that have performed incredibly well. With Die, My Love set to hit theaters on November 7, 2025, here’s hoping her latest delivers the same success.
