20-year-old Best Actress Oscar nominee, Jennifer Lawrence recalls growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, where her dad owned a construction company and her mom ran a summer camp. Her family had land and horses, she loved to fish and was a total tomboy: field hockey, softball, basketball on an all-boys team. “I was so dykey,” she says. The actress now lives in Los Angeles, but “little redneck things still come out, like I’m attracted to my brother. Stuff like that.”
Lawrence was 14, when she admits she “dragged” her mom to New York for auditions, including one for the role of Bella in “Twilight”. And she would have been perfect for the part, if Bella were a badass, instead of a frightened waif. She now views losing out on that part as a great thing, because the role she did get was in “Winter’s Bone”, a role she has received glowing reviews for : she is both harrowing and tender as the 17-year-old daughter of an Ozarks meth-cooker who’s fighting to take care of her little brother and sister.
While prepping for the part, Lawrence learned how to shoot a gun and field-dress squirrels. She already knew how to chop wood: “I went through a wood-chopping phase when I was nine or 10.” Has she been preparing an Oscar speech? “I have been practicing my losing face.”
To read more of this interview, go to: rollingstone.com
