Jennifer Lawrence: America’s Kick-Ass Sweetheart

Lawrence paid her dues for a while, playing supporting roles in things you’ve probably never seen, like a Charlize Theron movie called The Burning Plain and a bad TBS sitcom starring Bill Engvall. (She also auditioned for Bella in Twilight and Emma Stone’s role in Superbad.) Her breakthrough came with Winter’s Bone, a gritty, gothic murder story set in Ozark meth country, where the men tell the women things like, “I said shut up once already, with my mouth.” Lawrence starred as a tough-as-nails 17-year-old taking care of her little brother and sister. Karen read the book and told her she’d be perfect, but the director thought she was too pretty. So Lawrence hopped a redeye to New York, walked 13 blocks in the sleet, and showed up with a runny nose and hair she hadn’t washed in a week. She got the part.

She spent a month filming in Missouri, hanging out with a local family and learning to shoot rifles and chop wood. (Actually, she already knew how to chop wood. “I went through a wood-chopping phase when I was nine or 10.”) She disappeared into the role – yellowed teeth, cracked lips, lots of oversize flannel. In one scene, the actor John Hawkes, who played her fearsome uncle Teardrop, had to grab Lawrence by the hair and grip her throat. “I was always worried about hurting her,” he says. “But she told me to bring it every time.” The most talked-about scene was the one where Lawrence literally cut the guts out of a squirrel for that night’s dinner. (“I should say it wasn’t real, for PETA,” she’s said. “But screw PETA.”) “I think she screamed pretty loud when it was done,” Hawkes says. “Something like, ‘I’ll never eat spaghetti again.’ I don’t know that she’s necessarily fearless – but she’s good at convincing you.”

The movie made Lawrence a sensation, albeit a hesitant one. On the morning the Oscar nominations were announced, someone snapped a photo of her and her family just as her name was being read. The look on her face, she said, was “like I’m being sent off to jail.” Zoë Kravitz says she loved teasing her: “‘You’re up against Natalie Portman, you don’t stand a chance.’ And she’d go, ‘You’re right, I don’t!'” (Lenny says he did catch her in the library at his house in Paris, though, holding one of his Grammys and giving a practice acceptance speech.)

As it turned out, she didn’t stand a chance. (Although, let’s be real – could Natalie Portman grab a fistful of dead squirrel and deliver a line like “Do you guys want these fried or stewed?”) But even though she didn’t win, Lawrence definitely made an impression on the red carpet, in a bombshell-red dress that was half-haute-couture, half-Baywatch. (Her stylist said they were “on a crusade to bring back nipples.”) It was the opposite of Winter’s Bone – ostentatious and sexy. The best part was, not 15 minutes before, Lawrence was up in her hotel room, scarfing down a Philly cheesesteak.

“Jennifer doesn’t have a trace of arrogance,” Harrelson says. “She’s not trying to put on any airs or be anyone she’s not. She’s the real deal. She’s just this frickin’ amazing gal from Kentucky who hit it big.”

‘Are you hungry?” Lawrence asks. “Be-cause I have a whole burger-fries-Budweiser fantasy going on.”

We’re in Santa Monica now, where Lawrence lives in the same two-bedroom condo she and her mom used to share. Her mom has moved out, but Lawrence has a lot of sleepovers. “We get really stupid – like Beavis and Butt-Head level,” says Zoé Kravitz. “We’ll eat bad food and watch bad TV” – like Scare Tactics or Bad Girls Club – “and then she’ll just lie down on the bed and curl up like a little puppy.”

Lawrence likes it here. It’s a two-minute drive to Whole Foods, a 15-minute bike ride to the beach. “But I should move,” she says. “My address is on the Internet.” When she gets back from shooting her next film, she’s thinking of buying a house. “And a big dog,” she says. “And a shotgun.”

We can’t find a restaurant that’s open and serving beer, so we settle for one with a patio and lemonade. (“If there’s one thing people take from this article,” she says, “it should be the lack of support for day-drinking in L.A.”) She orders a burger, medium-rare, and a small pot of mint tea – she feels a cold coming on, and she doesn’t want to get sick before her big press tour. “This morning I was like, ‘This cold is kind of a pussy’ – but I think it’s getting worse.” She even went so far as to try her first-ever L.A. juice, some kind of “spinach-carrot-kale concoction. I took one sip, and immediately dumped a bunch of sugar in it.”