Jennifer Lawrence is one size, take her or leave her.
Despite physical inaccuracies, Lawrence tells us to pretend that one of her characters has fewer pounds on them. She's not going to be one of those extreme method actors like Christian Bale, who gained forty pounds for American Hustle and lost 60 pounds for The Machinist, or Russell Crowe, who lost 40 pounds for Gladiator and packed it back on for The Nice Guys.
In fact, Lawrence is hardly inspired to gain and lose weight to transform into a role at all. So it's no surprise that she didn't want to lose weight for one of her biggest roles.
Actors don't have to play characters that require them to gain or lose weight. But sometimes, a role does require you to be in the best possible shape of your life. Look at all the actors in the MCU; they literally go to superhero training camp. Many people would argue that roles with extra pounds should go to actors who are normally that size, but you can't really do that with dangerously thin characters.
Lawrence didn't care that one of her characters had to look starved due to certain circumstances. Some would argue that she didn't do the role justice; others would say she has every right not to want to lose weight for a role. Here's why Lawrence did not lose weight for one particular role and any other role she takes on in the future.
She's Against Dieting
Playing Katniss Everdeen undoubtedly put Lawrence on the map. But the actress had one problem playing the role that got her famous. She didn't want to lose weight to make herself look as accurate to the books as possible.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss is a starved young woman trying to stay alive in a survival game, at least in the books. In the films, Lawrence is spry and ready for the challenge ahead, with no emaciation visible. Critics took notice of her normal healthiness real quick.
Lawrence told Elle that losing weight to the point where she'd look dangerously thin was not part of her contract. "I’m never going to starve myself for a part," Lawrence said.
"I don’t want little girls to be like, 'Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner,'" Lawrence said. "That’s something I was really conscious of during training...I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong - not thin and underfed."
This doesn't really make much sense. If Lawrence did slim down to look underfed like her character was supposed to look, and kids saw that she was really thin because she's living in the wild trying to survive, wouldn't they put two and two together and understand why she was that thin? We highly doubt kids would say, "Wow, Katniss is so thin and pretty; I want to look emaciated and starved like I just won The Hunger Games too." Kids get those ideas from models, not Katniss's survival scenes.
So while she is touching on a critical issue of body image as a whole in Hollywood, it doesn't really fit with her situation. What does make sense, though, is Lawrence's other ideals about fitness and dieting.
As compared to her peers, her lifestyle is astonishingly realistic and totally relatable. She told Glamour, "I hate saying, 'I like exercising.' I want to punch people who say that in the face. But it's nice being in shape for a movie because they basically do it all for you. It's like, 'Here's your trainer. This is what you can eat'. I don't diet. I do exercise! But I don't diet. You can't work when you're hungry, you know?"
Lawrence says it's harder to say no to certain foods and diets than eating what she wants and burning it off later with exercise. "There's that Kate Moss quote that's like 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' and I can name a lot of things that taste better than skinny feels: bread, potatoes… a Philly cheesesteak and fries," she said.
"I don't like when people say, 'I only do this or eat this,'" she told Vogue. "Because I eat. I'm not very strict with my diet: If I want a piece of pizza, I eat a piece of pizza. But I do work out more than normal because I have a certain way that I want to look, and a way that I want to fit into my clothes.
"I get photographed when I'm not asking for it, so there's added pressure to look and feel your best. For me, it's easier to put that extra effort into the gym instead of putting the extra effort into: 'Oh no, I can't eat that.'"
Lawrence is on to something here, and it's refreshing to see an actress who isn't stressed about how she looks. She'll work out so she can eat the things she wants and look the way she wants, plain and simple. But don't expect her to be a certain weight for a role, even if the role requires her to look a certain way. It's what she wants and what she believes in, and no one can stop her. We guess that's what makes her just as headstrong as most of her characters, including Katniss.