Jennifer Lawrence thought long and hard before accepting the lead role of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games franchise because of the ‘Twilight-level fame’ that she was worried would come with it. Lawrence had auditioned for the role of Bella Swan in the Twilight cast, but it went to Kristen Stewart.
Speaking to Bill Simmons on his podcast, Lawrence said; “It was so hard to explain to people. It was like I don’t think you understand this level of fame … I just assumed it was gonna be like Twilight, like the Twilight-level Fame, and that was just never something I had in mind.”
“I wanted to do Indies, and I wanted to do good films, but I didn’t want to be the most famous person on the planet,” she said, adding that she would have been ‘miserable’ if she had landed the Twilight movies. “That’s a very different life than what I had pictured for myself.”
Despite Lawrence’s efforts, she did end up becoming super famous, ironically from doing more ‘prestigious’ films such as Winter’s Bone, American Hustle, and Joy – all of which she was Oscar-nominated for. She won the Lead Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook when she was only 22.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson – the stars of Twilight – have spent years shaking off the legacy of the vampire teen movies. They seemed to learn from Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood – who both came out of huge franchises and made interesting, idiosyncratic career choices. Stewart was Oscar-nominated for portraying Princess Diana in Spencer, and Pattinson recently went back to blockbusters with The Batman.
Check out our guide to the best fantasy movies and our guide to the upcoming Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.