When Jennifer Lawrence was asked to film her first-ever nude scene for her new movie, Red Sparrow, she initially balked at the idea.
“Red Sparrow really scared the hell out of me,” the Oscar winner, 27, admitted in her March 2018 cover story for Vanity Fair. I tried to do the movie without nudity but realized it just wouldn’t be right to put the character through something that I, myself, am not willing to go through.”
The decision was particularly difficult for Lawrence because she was among the celebrities whose intimate photos were hacked and uploaded online back in August 2014.
“My biggest fear was that people would say, ‘Oh, how can you complain about the hack if you’re going to get nude anyway?’” she explained to the magazine.
Ultimately, the Silver Linings Playbook actress knew there was a distinction between voluntarily shedding her clothes for a role and having her personal images stolen and shared with the world. “One is my choice,” she said. “I got something back that was taken from me, and it also felt normal.”
In May 2016, Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was charged and sentenced to 18 months in prison for using fraudulent email addresses to illegally gain access to more than 100 iCloud and Gmail accounts, including those that belonged to Lawrence, Kate Upton and Gabrielle Union.
But these days, the Hunger Games star is proud of her work — especially her role in Red Sparrow. “I wasn’t really looking for a spy movie. I feel like that genre’s been explored,” she told Us Weekly and other reporters at the movie’s premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City on Monday, February 26. “I’m a big fan, but until I’d read this [script], I’d never seen such a unique take on the life of a spy and the brutality that goes into a double life, lying to everyone and the anxiety of being surveilled. It was just the brutality of the lifestyle and how it affects these humans is what interested me.”
Red Sparrow hits theaters on Friday, March 2.
