Jennifer Lawrence's breakthrough role in the 2010 drama Winter’s Bone secured her first Academy Award nomination when she was just 20, and she won the Best Actress category two years later for Silver Linings Playbook. Since then, she has become one of the most prolific, critically acclaimed and highest paid actors in Hollywood as the star of The Hunger Games series and three X-Men movies. Other leading roles include American Hustle, Joy and, most recently, the psychological drama Die My Love.

Jennifer talks to John Wilson about her childhood on her parents' farm in Kentucky. After being scouted by a modelling agency, she left school as a teenager and moved to New York to start working as a model and actor. She recalls how the film Taxi Driver, starring a young Jodie Foster, made a big impression on her as an aspiring actress and how Jodie Foster later became a role model when she directed Jennifer on the set of The Beaver. She also counts Gena Rowlands' performance in A Woman Under The Influence, written and directed by John Cassavetes, as an important inspiration, as well as working with directors David O Russell and Lynne Ramsay. 

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Archive and film clips used:

Uncle Buck, John Hughes, 1989 No Hard Feelings, Gene Stupnitsky, 2023 Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976 Winter's Bone, Debra Granik, 2010 The Hunger Games, Gary Ross, 2012 American Hustle, David O Russell, 2013 Veep, Armando Iannucci, 2012 A Woman Under The Influence, John Cassavetes, 1974 Die My Love, Lynne Ramsay, 2025