Actress Jennifer Lawrence has always been one of the actors who constantly try to break the mold they are in. The Academy Award-winning actress has starred in independent dramas and headlined billion-dollar franchises. At the peak of her career, she took a brief hiatus and returned with a romantic comedy earlier this year.

Lawrence gained recognition early in her career and made decisions to make sure that she stayed relevant in the ever-changing landscape of the film industry. One of them was the sensual and bold photo shoot for the cover of Esquire, which she posed for at the age of nineteen.

Jennifer Lawrence’s Esquire Photoshoot

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone

Jennifer Lawrence broke into Hollywood and rose to stardom early at the age of twenty with a starring role in the drama Winter’s Bone. The film earned her nominations for a Golden Globe, SAG Awards, and Academy Awards. The film was her breakthrough role and she was lauded for her authentic performance as a low-income teenager looking after her mentally ill mother.

The actress always had a penchant for playing dramatic and tragic characters before Winter’s Bone, known for playing roles in Poker House, where she played the daughter of a drug-abusing prostitute and a daughter who finds out about her mother’s extramarital affair in Burning Plain.

Jennifer Lawrence

To break this stereotype of being repeatedly cast in troubled roles, Jennifer Lawrence decided to pose in a sensual and image-changing photoshoot by Esquire. The actress wore a bikini for the Esquire cover photoshoot. She was only nineteen at the time.

While the actress did not immediately get cast in glamour-heavy roles, she did headline the young-adult franchise The Hunger Games, which propelled her to international stardom. She played the protagonist Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers instead of her sister to be a participant in the ruthless Hunger Games. She was also a part of the X-Men franchise, where she played a younger Mystique opposite James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

Jennifer Lawrence On Her Sensual Photoshoot At 19

Jennifer Lawrence

Actress Jennifer Lawrence has grown to new heights since her appearance in Winter’s Bone. After her leading roles in franchises such as The Hunger Games and X-Men, she went back to her dramatic roots with David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. The actress won a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film, making her the second-youngest awardee for the category.

She has since starred in a number of films such as American Hustle, Joy, Passengers, and Red Sparrow. The actress had a nude scene in the latter, which she said felt fine and comfortable with. After a brief hiatus, she starred recently in the romantic comedy No Hard Feelings, opposite Andrew Barth Feldman.

Lawrence has spoken about her bold Esquire photoshoot and the reasoning behind choosing to do it at the time. The actress was only nineteen when she posed for the sensual photoshoot, where she rocked a bikini. Speaking to The Guardian about the photo shoot, she said,
“There are two sides of this job. There’s the artistic side, which is acting in the movie. But there’s also the business side. And I understood that the shoot was a good business decision. I had many people that I completely trust – agents, publicists – and they said it was a good idea. And I agreed. I understood why it had to happen. I’m sure I’ve been criticized for doing it but you know what? I don’t care.”
The actress had also criticized Hollywood’s practice of having typecast roles based on looks. She said that studio films usually tend to depict only stereotypical women characters and that the independent scene is more imaginative and diverse. She also said that her parents were completely fine with her decision to do the photo shoot.

Source: The Guardian