When Jennifer Lawrence embraced the method by getting high on set: “Everyone was fucking with me”

Posted On June 25, 2025June 25, 2025

Despite her career still being in its early stages, Jennifer Lawrence has delivered an incredible number of scintillating performances in her 15 years as a veritable movie star. From her emotional debut in Winter’s Bone, through her iconic franchise role as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, to showing a true aptitude for gross-out comedy in No Hard Feelings, Lawrence has proven she has many, many strings to her proverbial bow.

Considering this, it’s perhaps no wonder that she’s already been nominated for four, yes, four Academy Awards at only 34 years old, with one win under her belt already. At this rate, by the time she hits her 60s, she’ll be in Meryl Streep territory, with 20+ nominations. Interestingly, though, Lawrence once revealed that she chose a scene opposite Streep—also known as the greatest actor of her generation—to experiment with a spot of method acting, something she has claimed tends to set her on edge.

“I would be nervous to work with someone who’s method,” she claimed during an appearance on Hot Ones in 2023, “Because I would have no idea how to talk to them, ’cause like, do I have to be in character? That would just make me nervous.”

Interestingly, Lawrence has been honest that her approach to her craft has changed a lot over the years. Perhaps that is simply a natural extension of growing into adulthood onscreen next to a host of the best actors plying their trade today, from Streep to Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper to Amy Adams, and Woody Harrelson to Julianne Moore. However, she admitted that it wasn’t until she worked with a certain ‘Dark Knight’ that she finally found an approach that spoke to her.

“I had always been very on/off on/off,” Lawrence revealed about how she looked at maintaining her character on set, “until I did American Hustle and worked with Christian Bale. I noticed when the camera started rolling, and the crew started preparing, and it would be about ten seconds to action, he would start getting ready.”

Lawrence liked this style because it meant she didn’t have to worry about staying in-character between takes, or fret that she wouldn’t be able to turn her character on and off like a light switch when the director yelled “Action!”. Instead, she could be fairly relaxed, then get into the zone a few seconds before cameras started rolled. “I saw that and was like, ‘That seems like a really good idea,’” she smiled, noting, “So, then I started to do that”.

In truth, prior to her scene with Streep, the closest Lawrence had come to method acting was when she learned how to pick a lock to play a spy in Red Sparrow, or received falconry training to become comfortable with holding the bird of prey in Joy. However, when she found herself on the set of Adam McKay’s end-of-the-world satire Don’t Look Up, surrounded by luminaries like Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet, and Cate Blanchett, she decided now was the time to give method acting a try… by getting high opposite the star of Sophie’s Choice.

Before shooting the scene with Streep, which didn’t actually entail any dialogue for Lawrence’s stressed-out scientist, Dr Kate Dibiasky, the star approached McKay and asked if he’d be OK with her getting stoned. You see, Dibiasky’s main method of taking her mind off the world-ending comet hurtling towards Earth is smoking marijuana, and Lawrence figured it might be good for her to really be high. This wasn’t a way to get a bit rebellious on set, either, with a smiling Lawrence insisting it was purely an acting exercise “because my character was getting high in the movie”.

Amazingly, McKay agreed to her cockamamie scheme and even decided that he wouldn’t throw to her for some off-the-cuff improvisations, as is usually the case in his movies. However, this didn’t mean he was above planning some fun at his leading lady’s expense, even if he never went through with it. “I kept turning to my script supervisor, Cate Hardman, and was like, ‘I just want to say, Hey Jen. I think I have a monologue idea for you’,” he chuckled. “And I would look at Jen and was like, ‘I can’t do it. It would be too mean’”.

Hilariously, though, Lawrence’s co-stars didn’t share McKay’s restraint, and she grumbled, “I was a real target. Everyone was fucking with me”. However, then she giggled, “I guess because I was high. Easy to fuck with”. Unfortunately, it’s unknown if Streep was one of the co-stars who messed with the young actor, although we’d like to believe she was.

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