Jennifer Lawrence

It depends on what I have in hand at the time.

Great in Winter's Bone, Joy, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle - the latter showing she can do comedy properly if she wants to.

The Hunger Games would be nothing without her as well, she carried that franchise brilliantly. She's less good in X-Men.

Seems to have gone off the boil a bit in the last couple of years, it would be good to see her in another really good dramatic role like Winter's Bone.

She is refreshingly honest but sometimes a bit too much in interviews - I can only take small doses of her!

A good actress but I feel her hype came far too soon - to the point I feel she’s slightly over rated. Still, I think her best is yet to come and that makes her an interesting one to watch out for. I know she’s been in popular movies, but I’m sort of waiting for her ‘Erin Brockovich’ moment.

I think she has hit that part of her career where she is no longer an ingenue but is *clearly* a charismatic performer and a movie star - and Holllywood just doesn't know what to do with her. Traditionally, she'd be starring in a bunch of romantic comedies and raking in the moolah for them at this stage of her career, but Hollywood doesn't do romantic comedies any more. She's really far too young for the last bunch of Oscar-baity roles she was cast in - she was playing characters who should have been middle-aged - she was cast in a comic-book role before female characters were really leading them and so is now stuck in that franchise as a supporting character. She's too mainstream for the sort of interesting indie roles the likes of Kirsten Stewart is doing.

Hollywood still hasn't got its head around the fact that actresses can be bona fide movie stars and just doesn't know how to create a vehicle for her the way they would for an actor with her sort of draw.

Yes, if the Marvel Studios guys get to play with the X-Man then all bets are off!

Interesting idea about the Star Wars spin-offs, too.

No way - she was great in American Hustle, but she wasn't even in the same league as Lupita Nyongo that year.

I thought she was good in Joy as well, and I do think she deserved the Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook - there are a lot of layers and nuances to her performance in that film and I thought she was wonderful. Winter's Bone is still her best though in my opinion.

I do get the impression she's a bit tired of playing Mystique (didn't some of them try to get out of doing the next one?), so I'm not sure she'd do a Marvel/X Men film...

Had she not won for 'Silver Linings Playbook' the year before, she would definitely have won for 'American Hustle'. She was as good as any of the nominees in the category that year.

I agree, he should have. But it was seen to be finally Leonardo DiCaprio's year (even though it wasn't his best performance) so the Academy were desperate to give it to him as well, although Redmayne should have won back to back awards. The only one in that category who came close to Redmayne was Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs.

I thought Redmayne was awful in The Danish Girl and I say this as someone that rooted for him for The Theory of Everything over Michael Keaton in Birdman despite that being my favourite film of the year and heavily rooted for Alicia Vikander too.

As for Jennifer, she's a very good actress that unfortunately got overhyped by the industry too quickly. 4 Oscar nominations including a win by 25 is basically unheard of and although each of her four nominations were for worthy performances (although I don't think she should have won for any of them actually), people started going into her films expecting otherworldly performances and I don't think she has given one yet. Although I think her nomination for Joy was deserved, it was the last straw for some people (considering the film itself was pretty poorly received) and I think people started thinking that they'll just nominate her for anything. The nominations/wins (three Golden Globe wins!) combined with the mainstream success of The Hunger Games and X-Men combined with her in your face personality meant that people got sick of her a lot more quickly than they would if she had received the more moderate success of someone like Saoirse Ronan (three Oscar nominations, one Golden Globe win by 24). I actually think Saoirse is more talented than Jennifer but fails to achieve the same success because she's less of an IT girl/big name than Jennifer was at her peak. It didn't help that Jennifer did so many films with David O Russell, all three roles of which should really have gone to an older actress. If you don't like O Russell's style, which isn't for everyone, then you would probably have felt alienated by Jennifer as three of her four Oscar noms were in his films.

Jennifer's best performance is absolutely in mother! in my opinion. Obviously the Oscars would have never touched that film but that's the only one where I would happily give that performance an Oscar, although perhaps not last year with such strong performances as Ronan in Lady Bird and Krieps in Phantom Thread. She played against type and against her own personality and she pulled it off flawlessly.

Other than mother! her career choices recently have been pretty bad. I read that a few weeks ago she left her agent and now doesn't have one and just has a manager. This is the same strategy (and the same manager) as Leonardo DiCaprio so I think this could be a good move for her. Her upcoming rumored projects include films directed by Adam McKay (The Big Short) and Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name). By the time these projects get made and released in a few years time I'm hopeful that the internet will have got over their distaste for her and that she can make somewhat of a comeback. Just please don't go back to Russell for a while.

I agree with that completely - it's been a lot about timing as well - she and Emma Stone basically dominated the press without even really (seemingly) wanting to do so for a few years and it got overwhelming. And both ended up getting their Oscars for what are widely thought not to be their best performances.

I agree Saoirse Ronan is a better actress as well - I expect nomination number 4 will be coming her way next year for Mary Queen of Scots if early buzz is anything to go by, and I certainly wouldn't begrudge her a win. Then again, a lot of people seem to think this will be another year of righting old wrongs by finally giving Glenn Close a win...

This is a problem driven by SEO and click-bait culture - as soon as the online media realise that writing about someone gets them hits, they all immediately churn out article after article about them, everyone is looking to get that bit of video out of them that'll go viral, and they're suddenly omnipresent without even trying. Often because everyone is recycling the same content. Of course being involved in traditional awards campaigns  - which are still very print media, broadcast TV, and personal appearance heavy because that's how Oscar voters consume media -  means that you also turn up on all the traditional media outlets at the same time. But at least a publicist can try to control that - the online stuff they can do nothing about.


And then everyone gets sick of them in very short order. Disappearing for a bit is the only way to cure it - which is what J.Law seems to have done.

Although in this case, if it were to happen it will be because Glenn Close is AMAZING in 'The Wife'. It's a performance that's equal to any of her other Oscar nominated roles.