Were The Hunger Games Stars Under Pressure To Lose Weight?
The Hunger Games franchise took the world by storm, first as a best-selling series of books, then with their film adaptations of the book, which spanned across four movies, starting with 2012's The Hunger Games and ending with 2015s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part Two. The films all boast an impressive cast of characters with some very well-known actors attached to them, like Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, Elizabeth Banks and Woody Harrelson. The main three leads were played by Hollywood's young elite at the time, including Liam Hemsworth, who was pretty new to Hollywood at the time, Josh Hutcherson, who already had a career in voice acting and is known for his lead role in Zathura, and Jennifer Lawrence with X-Men: First Class under her belt.
And while starring in action movies does come with the pressure of being in peak physical condition, sometimes the advice given to the actors isn't in their best interest, especially when it involves telling an already slim or petite person to lose more weight just to play a part in a film.
Jennifer Lawrence Felt Pressure To Lose Weight
Lawrence was a relatively new, unknown actress when the role of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games was presented to her. She had just graced the big screen with her presence in X-Men: First Class as a young Mystique, a character that is essentially known for leaving very little of her body to the imagination.
Jennifer Lawrence admits that she has positive memories of her time as Katniss Everdeen, but there is some advice that was given to her in the early days of her career that stuck with her forever, and it's advice that she immediately rejected.
She recalls one of the biggest questions that kept coming her way was surrounding how much weight she was going to lose to portray Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games franchise, something she admits affected her craft at the time.
Lawrence goes on to say "I didn't know how to fix it. I was scrambling, trying to fix it by saying yes to this movie and then trying to counteract it with that movie. And not realizing that what I had to do was no movies until something spoke to me."
She ended up taking a two-year break from acting in 2019 before returning for her film Don't Look Up.
Were Other Hunger Games Stars Made To Do The Same?
With Lawrence being pressured to lose weight as the female lead in The Hunger Games by those in charge of the film, one has to wonder if the male leads in the film were held to the same standard as Lawrence, and whether they were told they need to attain a specific physique as well.
While women in the industry are typically told to slim down for roles to attain a specific standard of beauty, men in Hollywood are also often made to adhere to very strict diets and workout routines to star in action-based films.
There are also circumstances where actors may need to gain or lose an extreme amount of weight for a role, like Christian Bale in the Machinist, who followed an insanely low-calorie intake in order to appear skeletal for the film.
Liam Hemsworth, who played Gale in The Hunger Games films, admits that he was told to lose weight for the film, but not by anyone on the crew or production team; rather, his older brother Chris Hemsworth told him he should lose weight.
Hemsworth recalls "My brother Chris texted me before shooting and told me to lose weight. He said 'It's called The Hunger Games, not The Eating Games." And while Josh Hutcherson appeared to slim down for the franchise, specifically during the Mockingjay films, it was apparently all CGI magic.
The actor admits that his image in the films was altered in post-production and that he did not lose weight to portray Peeta in those films, who is incredibly emaciated due to his time spent captured at The Capital in the film.
Lawrence Refused To Lose Weight For A Good Reason
Jennifer Lawrence has always been outspoken against being told to lose weight for a role and has always advocated for body positivity throughout her career, going so far as to say calling someone fat on TV "should be illegal."
And she has held steadfast in her viewpoints, which appear to be working for her. Outside of gaining weight for Silver Linings Playbook, something she was actually happy to do, Lawrence has not had to change her appearance to be successful in Hollywood.
Losing weight would have certainly made Lawrence appear more like Katniss in the film, who comes from poverty in the book and is slim because of her circumstances, but Lawrence refused to essentially starve herself, and with good reason.
Lawrence, who is already very against dieting, admitted that she is never going to starve herself for a part in any film and that losing weight for The Hunger Games was not part of her contract.
She made it a point to want her body to look "fit and strong- not thin and underfed" because she knew many young girls would be watching.
She didn't want her appearance to possibly lead young girls to push themselves to achieve an unsafe and unrealistic body standard, opting instead to make Katniss look like a healthy average girl that many would be able to relate to.
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