HOLLYWOOD (AFP) - Jennifer Lawrence became one of the youngest best actress Oscar winners ever Sunday for “Silver Linings Playbook” - using her “Hunger Games” drive to secure Hollywood’s highest honour.
“You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell. This is nuts!” Lawrence said about the standing ovation she received after she tripped on her way up onto the stage in a voluminous Dior Couture gown. The 22-year-old former cheerleader has now added Academy Award prestige to the fortune undoubtedly made playing Katniss Everdeen in the blockbuster teen movie franchise. And she is not shy of speaking her mind about Tinseltown, telling a recent interviewer: “It’s almost like I subconsciously don’t want to work anymore, so I’m trying to ruin my career.” “I’m so aware of all the mess that surrounds Hollywood, and how everyone gets on this high horse and thinks that they’re curing cancer and it makes me so uncomfortable every time I see it. So I go in the exact opposite direction,” she said.
Lawrence, who plays a messed-up 20-something who falls for Bradley Cooper’s recovering mental patient character in “Silver Linings Playbook,” struck Oscars gold on her second attempt, after being nominated in 2011 for “Winter’s Bone.” The only younger best actress nominees were 12-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2002’s “Whale Rider” and Quvenzhane Wallis, who was in the running this year for “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” at the age of nine.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, the young Lawrence was keen on cheerleading, field hockey, softball, and modeling - “none of which she held a passion for,” according to her IMDb movie industry website biography. Her acting career started at the age of 14 when she spent the summer in New York City, wowing producers with cold-read auditions and earning a number of small commercial and film roles.
Anne Hathaway won the best supporting actress Oscar for her searing portrayal of a dying woman Fantine in musical adaptation “Les Miserables.”
Hathaway bested fellow nominees Amy Adams for “The Master,” Sally Field for “Lincoln,” Helen Hunt for “The Sessions,” and Jacki Weaver for “Silver Linings Playbook.” Hathaway’s signature moment in the film comes when she belts out “I Dreamed a Dream,” and on Sunday, as she took the golden statuette from last year’s best supporting actor Oscar winner Christopher Plummer, she said: “It came true.” “Here’s hoping that someday in the not too distant future, the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories and not in real life,” she added.