J-law Plays by Her Own Rules
She’d been traumatized after nude photos she took for former boyfriend Nicholas Hoult, 34, were leaked in 2017. And she’d just given birth a few months earlier to son Cy with husband Cooke Maroney, 39. But while filming the raunchy comedy No Hard Feelings in 2022, Jennifer Lawrence, 33, insisted on getting naked for a fight scene. “Everyone in my life and my team is doing the right thing and going, ‘Are you sure?’” she said. “I didn’t even have a second thought. It was hilarious to me.”
That’s J-law. The Hunger Games star, who won an Oscar in 2013 for Silver Linings Playbook, “makes her own rules,” says an insider. “She’s one of the most outspoken, strong-willed actresses in Hollywood and is unapologetic about that.”
DOING THINGS HER WAY
She can afford to take risks after topping the highestpaid actress list in 2015 and 2016 with earnings of almost $100 million. “Being authentic is what’s made her so popular,” notes the insider. “J-law’s never pretended to be the ‘perfect’ Hollywood starlet.”
The Kentucky native “dropped out of middle school” at 14, she’s confessed, and “never felt very smart” — until acting imbued her with confidence. Critics panning her flicks, like Passengers, Red Sparrow, Mother! and Dark Phoenix, doesn’t stop Jennifer from doing what she loves, either. When she reads a script, J-law’s said, she gets “an overwhelming feeling of, ‘I get this. This is what I was meant to do.’”
She worked three jobs — cleaning houses, tending bar and making Subway sandwiches — before scoring a soap opera role in her native Australia as a teen. Yet Margot Robbie remained broke. Luckily, her single mom made sacrifices to help support her. “She’d take money out of the house mortgage and lend [it to] me,” recalled Margot, 33, who wrote down every dollar she borrowed. “I have that piece of paper still.”
After starring in The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013, though, Margot paid off her mom’s entire mortgage — and now she’s the reigning highest-paid actress in the world two years running, earning a reported $59 million for her work acting in and producing Barbie, 2023’s top-grossing film. “The success of Barbie has solidified Margot’s Alist status,” says an insider.
“She’s the biggest star on the planet!”
REJECTING CLICHÉS
Margot’s refused to coast on her beauty or play the Hollywood dating game to fuel her fame. “I made a conscious decision not to date actors,” she’s admitted, because “it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.”
Instead, in 2014 — a year after meeting her husband of seven years, British director-producer Tom Ackerley, 33 — Margot forged a far more lucrative career as a producer, co-founding Luckychap, the production company behind lauded films like I, Tonya, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn. “Margot prides herself on succeeding without compromising herself,” says a source, “or revealing too much about her private life with Tom.”