Hollywood actress Jennifer Lawrence said after the success of The Hunger Games and her Oscar win she “lost a sense of control” but her new film Causeway finally “feels personal” to her again.
The 32-year-old has returned to her independent film roots playing a soldier struggling to adjust to life after returning home to New Orleans in Lila Neugebauer’s directorial debut.
The Apple TV+ film is the first from Lawrence’s production company Excellent Cadaver and sees her perform alongside Brian Tyree Henry.
Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival special presentation on Saturday, Lawrence said: “It felt serendipitous the first film of my production company be an independent, that’s where I got my roots and that’s what I attribute my entire career too.
“Lila is so clearly perfect. We went to dinner that ended up being five hours long, she was brilliant. She has very sharp instincts and I felt my only job was to protect them.
“It’s a movie about PTSD told completely in the present. The first thing I fell in love with from the script was the melody, slow melodic rhythm that just brings forward performance.
“I love making those kinds of movie. I also love superhero movies as much as the next person but it had been so long since I had read something with a melody like that.”
She described her best actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook in 2012 as “extremely overwhelming”, adding: “I think eventually I lost a sense of control… between Hunger Games and winning the Oscar I think that I became such a commodity that I felt like every decision was a big, big group decision because I had no idea what a huge move star does next.
“I reflect now and I think of those following years, a loss of control and a reaction to trying to get that back.
“I’m so happy that stopped… I made some big changes and finally got the voice in my head back and now it feels personal to me again for the first time in a long time.”
Lawrence likened the shock of wining an Academy Award to her experience in Causeway.
She said: “I am experiencing a similar shock with Causeway… three-and-a-half years of one challenge after the other. It was so personal that it feels impossible that people will understand and get it or care or connect to it.
“It almost feels like diary pages.”
Causeway will be released on Apple TV+ on November 4th.
