JENNIFER LAWRENCE
With an Oscar by the age of 22, Jennifer Lawrence is now the most powerful actor on the planet. Now the face of Dior’s first new fragrance in almost ten years, she talks defying beauty standards and learning to love the way we look
The Oscar-winning actress on self-acceptance, politics and Dior’s new fragrance
“COMFORT
WITHIN ONE’S SKIN HAPPENS with
AGE. YOU ACCEPT THAT
this IS ME”
IN AN INDUSTRY KNOWN for its seemingly unattainable beauty standards, Lawrence is the beauty realist we all need. Her frank honesty adds a much-appreciated sense of realness to the very surreal experience of sitting in a plush Beverly Hills hotel suite with an Oscar-winning Hollywood A-lister to discuss her new role as the face of Dior’s new fragrance, Joy. ‘It was crazy when they came to me with a fragrance. It was really personal. My mum wore Miss Dior, so that was my first experience of perfume,’ she says. ‘It’s the first time in 2O years that Dior has launched a new perfume, so it’s a major event and real honour to be a part of it.’
Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Lawrence was just a teenager when a talent scout spotted her on holiday in New York. Her breakout role came in 2O1O, as Ree in Winter’s Bone, followed by a career-building and history-making lead in The
Hunger Games. Now, at 28, she’s one of the highest-paid film stars in the world and the youngest person to have earned four Oscar nominations (she won Best Actress for her role in Silver Linings Playbook) and three Golden Globe awards.
Historically, an actor’s preoccupation with her appearance grows in tandem with fame, the face and body gradually meta morphisising from one red-carpet appearance to one film premiere to another. But Lawrence’s appeal largely lies in her rejection of all that. ‘I think [comfort within one’s skin] is something that happens with age. You start accepting this is what I look like and this is me. And you’re either going to feel good about yourself and accept it, or you’re not.’
Lawrence applied a similar matter-of-fact attitude to her work with Dior. Renowned perfumer François Demachy, who worked on the Joy scent with Lawrence, describes the actor as ‘very natural, but very spontaneous’. So they tried to bottle that sensibility into the perfume itself. ‘She says what she thinks. There’s no fil- ter. She’s direct. She’s a young, modern woman. She follows her own instincts,’ he explains.
‘I mean, I definitely had my opinion because I’m obviously opinionated,’ Lawrence laughs later. ‘I don’t like scents to be too strong. Dior wanted something really young and fresh that could also be classic, so we really had the same objectives going in,’ she says. The end result was a fragrance that mixed the light freshness of florals with a more sensual musk. ‘The balance means it works all year long,’ she says.
Lawrence’s no-filter approach to expressing herself goes beyond beauty. In 2O14, she famously wrote an essay for her friend Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter newsletter about the gender pay gap in Hollywood. It kick-started a global conversation that was long overdue. ‘It’s a global issue that touches every woman in the workforce and I couldn’t really stay silent about it. I’ve been given a voice and if I don’t use it, then what’s the point? I think being outspoken and also having a passion for justice is also part of my make-up. As I have gotten older, my passion grew into politics,’ she says.
So is a political future on the cards? ‘Acting is always going to be my first passion, but I’m incredibly passionate about politics. I’m always educating myself.’ She’s now working with Represent.Us, a grassroots anti-corruption campaign focused on stopping political bribery and fixing broken elections.
‘Everything that I care about falls under the wide net of political corruption.’ When Lawrence is not campaigning or formulating luxury fragrances, she is, of course, making movies (‘The final X-Men will be out in February, so that’s what’s next’) and, in a departure from her normal work life, writing a script with Amy Schumer. ‘The script is coming along. At the beginning we were so excited, we were like, crunch time. Turning in pages. Now we’re both just kind of relaxed with it. We’ll hang out then we start laughing, we add to it.’ It’s clear that no matter what kind of project she’s working on, Lawrence will always bring the joy. dior.com