Jennifer Lawrence says she was pressured to lose weight for The Hunger Games

'I knew the audience was children'

It's been ten years since The Hunger Games was released, and its star Jennifer Lawrence has spoken about the pressure she felt at the time. In a recent edition of Variety's Actors on Actors, Jennifer spoke about the responsibility she felt taking on the role of Katniss Everdeen, and how that was complicated by the pressure put on her to lose weight. In the series, she told Viola Davis that it was an "awesome responsibility" to star as the film's fierce lead. "Those books were huge and I knew that the audience was children," she said. The actress then said that one of the "biggest" conversations at the time was "How much weight are you going to lose?" Explaining her reaction to this question, Jennifer said: "Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don’t know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can’t because they’re not a certain weight. "And I can't let that seep into my brain either." Elsewhere in the interview, Jennifer spoke about what ie meant for the lead in an action film to be a woman. She said: "I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead. "And it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies — to keep certain people in the same positions that they’ve always been in." Related links:

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