Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell took the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday and had a conversation about the partnership that almost didn’t happen.
The frequent collaborators got opened up about working together on their three films —Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy, which brought it an impressive $588.7M at the global box office.
Russell revealed that their partnership almost didn’t happen as Lawrence was the last person to be cast in both Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. The director had his doubts working with an actress so young and inexperienced.
“For Silver Linings,” he said, “we thought you were too young and there were other actresses in the front of the line who were close to getting the role.”
But getting to work with Russell was a key experience for Lawrence who was at the beginning of her acting career. “You shaped me,” she told the director.
“I would put it this way: She showed up and she was, like, a raw talent that had no neuroses and no self-consciousness,” Russell said. “She was completely fearless. She would come into the scene like a weather system and leave me and Bob [De Niro] and Bradley [Cooper] and Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker just kind of like, wow.”
The story with American Hustle is completely different because by then Russell knew he wanted to work with Lawrence but she was “technically not available.”
“I called her up on her vacation and I said, ‘I feel like I would be remiss as your friend if I did not give you one last chance to say no to this role,” he recalled. “You said, ‘will I get to have big hair and long nails and be crazy?’ And I said yes, and you said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
