Jennifer Lawrence‘s advice to actors struggling to understand their own movies? Strike up a romantic relationship with your director.
Lawrence dished on Darren Aronofsky‘s 2017 mind-bending film “Mother!” during a recent “Watch What Happens Live” with Andy Cohen appearance. The “No Hard Feelings” actress admitted that she still does not totally understand the film, despite her intimate background knowledge of the script.
Host Cohen asked, “On a scale of one to totally confused, how much did you understand your film ‘Mother!’?”
Lawrence replied, “I’m going to be honest. Well, I was sleeping with the director so I had CliffsNotes. So…five? Or a four. But if anybody needs any tips on understanding their films, you know what to do.”
Cohen asked, “Fuck the director?” to which Lawrence quipped, “Yeah!”
In Aronofsky’s fall 2017 Biblical parable, Lawrence starred as an unnamed pregnant woman married to an unnamed, godlike man played by Javier Bardem. She’s rapidly terrorized by an onslaught of house guests who descend upon the mansion they share and wreak havoc on their lives.
Oscar-winner Lawrence recently reflected elsewhere on the physical toll of starring in Aronofsky’s box office bomb. Lawrence said during an appearance on the YouTube series “Hot Ones” that she still suffers from the on-set injuries.
“I tore my diaphragm and cracked something in my chest,” she said. “My top rib, it still clicks to this day.”
At the time of the film’s release, Lawrence opened up about going to a “darker place than I’ve ever been in my life,” saying, “I didn’t know if I’d be able to come out OK.”
Lawrence also claimed during the “Mother!” press tour that Aronofsky wanted to keep filming during emotionally and physically toiling moments.
“I have oxygen tubes in my nostrils, and Darren’s like, ‘It was out of focus; we’ve got to do it again,’” Lawrence said. “And I was just like, ‘Go fuck yourself.’”
Jennifer Lawrence has seldom spoken publicly about her short-lived relationship with Aronofsky, though in 2018, she said she couldn’t make it through Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” because the film may have hit too close to home: “Is [Reynolds Woodcock] kind of like a narcissistic sociopath and he’s an artist so every girl falls in love him because he makes her feel bad about herself and that’s the love story? I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know. I’ve been down that road, I know what that’s like, I don’t need to watch that movie.”
