Following intense online backlash for claiming that "The Hunger Games" (2012) actress Jennifer Lawrence was the first woman to star in an action film, Lawrence has now spoken out
"I most definitely did not mean to say that. I am aware that other women have starred in action movies before.
Jennifer Lawrence has come forth to defend her remarks regarding action films with female leads.
For its Actors on Actors series, Variety published a sit-down interview with Jennifer and Viola Davis on Wednesday.
The two Academy Award winners talked about their careers for 45 minutes, at one point getting into Jennifer Lawrence's part in the Hunger Games films.
If you didn't know, Jennifer's career took off in 2012 after she portrayed Katniss Everdeen in the first film in the four-part franchise based on Suzanne Collins' original trilogy of books.
Jennifer made a veiled reference to the fact that she was the first woman to play the lead in an action film when she said to Viola, "I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead."
Jennifer continued by saying that she's pleased to see that other films are breaking limits in the same genre as she was ten years ago, given how the business has changed since then.
"Every time a movie comes out that just rips through every one of those assumptions, and exposes that it is simply a fiction to keep certain people out of the cinema, it just makes me so thrilled," she exclaimed.
Jennifer's comments from the interview quickly gained notoriety, and viewers were quick to point out that Michelle Yeoh, Uma Thurman, Michelle Rodriguez, and Milla Jovovich were just a few of the famous women who had starred in action films.
The actor is here to provide some much-needed clarity and reassure fans that her intention was not to disparage the work of her peers.
"I most definitely did not mean to say that. I am aware that I am not the only woman to have ever starred in an action movie, she said on Thursday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
She continued, "What I meant to stress was how amazing that felt," alluding to the antiquated notion that women aren't cut out to play action movie leads. "And I wanted to dispel these outdated notions about Viola," the author said, "as well as the chitchat surrounding that kind of thing."
But I made a mistake, and it came out wrong," she said. Talking to a living legend made me nervous.