Jennifer Lawrence: Seven things we learned from her This Cultural Life interview

1. Her career happened by accident

As a child, Lawrence was “class clown” but had no real ambitions to act. Growing up in Kentucky, she “didn’t really think of that as an option,” she says. “When I thought about being a grown-up, I thought about being a mom. Or ‘Maybe I’ll be an interior designer’... [Acting] just wasn’t really a possibility. Then I went to New York for the first time, with my mom, and I got [talent scouted] on the street.”

She was scouted for modelling but immediately had bigger goals. “I had somehow made my mind up that I’d only sign with [an agency] that would let me act. My mom was like, ‘You’re lucky that anybody’s talking to you. Just say yes to anything.’”

2. She lived alone in New York when she was 14

Lawrence started acting professionally almost immediately. At 14, she moved to New York to live with her brother, only 18 himself, so she could pursue acting seriously. “One of the walls [of our apartment] was made out of cardboard, and it was extremely rat-infested,” she says. When her brother had to return to Kentucky, Lawrence lived alone.

She should have been in school, but dropped out. “I still get nervous about this, like my parents are going to go to jail,” she says. She pretended she’d completed school, so she could get more work. “If you have a GED (similar to a high school diploma), you’re more likely to get hired, because they don’t have to pay for a tutor… So my mom just kind of made one, on Microsoft Word.”

3. Jodie Foster helped her understand she could have both her dreams

One of Lawrence’s earliest jobs was the 2011 film The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster, a hero of hers. “I saw Taxi Driver (starring a very young Foster) when I was 14,” says Lawrence. “Her performance is just so pure.”

Lawrence credits Foster, and later Hunger Games co-star Julianne Moore, with helping her envision a life in the industry. “I’d always wanted to be a mom, and that was always the most important thing to me,” she says, “but I had no reference for what that looks like if…you’re a movie star. [Foster] was such a sweet mother and so normal. Julianne Moore was also really inspirational in that way… She would talk about her kids and it made me feel so much better. Before that I felt it was a choice: If I do this then my entire idea of being a mom is different. They made me feel like it wasn’t.”

She now has two children.

4. Shakespeare brought her out in a rash

Lawrence has never had acting lessons, or performed on stage, but joined a theatre group as a teenager. “I loved hearing Othello broken down in a way that I could understand,” she says. “But when it was showtime… Everyone did a 10-minute thing. I was Desdemona and it was the scariest. I broke out in a rash. I was so petrified.” Asked if we might see her perform Shakespeare in future, she says simply, “No.”

5. She doesn’t think she’s good at comedy

John Candy was Lawrence’s first acting influence – “Uncle Buck was very formative” – and she loves the film Dumb and Dumber. Comedy has always been her favourite genre. She’d like to direct comedy one day.

However, she doesn’t think she’s a very good comedy actress. “I love the comedic greats, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Alec Baldwin, who tackle comedy exactly like a drama, which is what I intended to do in No Hard Feelings (her only true comedy role to date). I don’t know if I did a good job… If I do comedy, I’m too aware and excited that it’s funny… I’m like, ‘Oh my god, a joke! How exciting!’”

6. She always speaks her mind

In 2015, after finding out she was paid less than her male co-stars, Lawrence wrote an open letter about the gender pay gap. Asked about it ten years later, she says, “I hope that it helped women find their voice. When women start finding their voice, men have to deal with that, and I think that can start to shape the culture and have effects.”

She recalls she decided to change how she advocates for herself following a conversation on the 2015 film Joy, when a producer dismissed her concerns about her working schedule. “I made a vow to myself after that. I was like, I’m not going to say anything anymore that I don’t mean. I’ll be kind, but I intend to say what I mean.”

7. She’s nearly killed her husband (accidentally)

Asked what she’d be doing if she’d never been scouted in New York, Lawrence says, “I would be a nurse… I was going to give [acting] five years, and then if I didn’t get anything, I was going to go back to Kentucky, go to school and become a nurse. I would have a great bedside manner. I’m not squeamish. There are things that would make me a very good nurse.”

It was when she got married, and occasionally tested those skills, that she realised everyone was lucky acting had worked out. “I’ve almost killed [my husband] multiple times. He’s the one that pointed out to me that I would be a deadly nurse.”