The famous director-actress duo got candid about their collaborations.
The two spoke at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night and revealed that their successful partnership almost didn’t happen. The duo has collaborated trio of pics together —Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy.
Lawrence was the last name added to Silver Linings Playbook’s call sheet.
“For Silver Linings,” Russell said, “we thought you were too young and there were other actresses in the front of the line who were close to getting the role.”
Being so young on Russell’s set was a formative experience for Lawrence who told the director, “You shaped me.”
“I would put it this way: She showed up and she was, like, a raw talent that had no neuroses and no self-consciousness,” Russell said. “She was completely fearless. She would come into the scene like a weather system and leave me and Bob [De Niro] and Bradley [Cooper] and Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker just kind of like, wow.”
The story is quite different with American Hustle. By then, Russell knew he wanted to work with Lawrence but she was busy on other projects and was “technically not available.”
“I called her up on her vacation and I said, ‘I feel like I would be remiss as your friend if I did not give you one last chance to say no to this role,” he recalled. “You said, ‘will I get to have big hair and long nails and be crazy?’ And I said yes, and you said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
Russell and Lawrence’s three collabs hauled a very impressive $588.7M at the global box office.
