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Jennifer Lawrence opened up about some minor disasters while filming
Lawrence remembered the time she accidentally took an Ambien in the morning while making The Hunger Games
She said she was “hallucinating” while filming with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Elizabeth Banks because of it.
Jennifer Lawrence is opening up about some chaos she accidentally caused on the set of The Hunger Games.
Lawrence, 35, spoke to Leonardo DiCaprio for Variety’s Actors on Actors series. In the article published Dec. 17, Lawrence and DiCaprio — who starred together in 2021’s Don’t Look Up and will reunite in a new Martin Scorsese movie — opened up about some of their bad habits on set.
“I think I shoot out a lot of ideas that are sometimes unnecessary,” DiCaprio, 51, said. “Like a shotgun spray of anything that comes to mind.”
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Lawrence shared, “My bad habit is I’m so good at letting go at the end of the day, that I don’t think about the next day. And then it’s a mad scramble in the hair and makeup trailer.” She said that habit is “great” for her life and keeps her from going “crazy,” but “the next morning is hell.”
She remembered that when she made 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, she had a scene where she had to yell sports statistics at Robert De Niro, but “I didn’t know that I had to do that until the day of, and it’s Robert De Niro and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to f——- waste Robert de Niro’s time.’ So that’s an example of a really bad thing to do.” She ultimately “nailed it” on the first take but then messed up every other take.
Lawrence also said, “You and I are both obsessive about sleep when we’re working, like counting the hours.” She remembered that when she made 2018’s Red Sparrow, she messed up her sleep by taking an Adderall instead of a sleeping pill. “And then I didn’t sleep all night. I was taking hot showers in a panic. I am not somebody who can function without sleep,” she said. The next day on set “sucked.”
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But then, another mixup happened when she made The Hunger Games movies. “I also once took an Ambien in the morning, thinking it was something else,” she said. “It was a dance scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman on the second Hunger Games movie.” The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was released in 2013.
“I was hallucinating,” Lawrence admitted. “Elizabeth Banks got really annoyed with me. Maybe she didn’t know that I was on an Ambien.”
In The Hunger Games film series, Lawrence played Katniss Everdeen. Banks played Effie Trinket, while Hoffman, who died in 2014 at the age of 46, played Plutarch Heavensbee.
Lawrence is reportedly set to return to the world of The Hunger Games in 2026’s Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel about Haymitch Abernathy (originally played by Woody Harrelson). She’ll be joined by Josh Hutcherson, who played Peeta Mallark. Sunrise on the Reaping is the sixth film in the franchise, after the four original films starring Lawrence and the 2023 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Back in 2023, Lawrence told Variety she was “totally” open to reprising her role as Katniss. “If Katniss could ever come back into my life, 100 percent,” she explained.
