Just along for the ride! Jennifer Lawrence has led blockbuster franchises and has a mantle full of trophies, but she knows her career hasn’t been without a few bumps in the road.
The Causeway star, 32, opened up about one of her most major movie misses in a new profile for the New York Times, published Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022. There, she admitted that her 2016 sci-fi flick Passengers could have been avoided — if she listened to her friend’s advice.
Looking back on the Chris Pratt project, Jennifer told NYT, “Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her.”
Jennifer came into the project as a huge star following the success of The Hunger Games, so the expectations — and budgets — were high. Billed as an A-lister-driven, sci-fi rom-com dramedy, Passengers just didn’t take off. The upside? A global haul of $300 million was a modest success, based on the feature’s rumored $100 to $150 million budget.
It fared far worse on the critical side, however, with Rotten Tomatoes stamping the film with a feeble 33%. The consensus? J. Law and Chris’ chemistry just couldn’t make up for a troubled script. (The film did earn a few Oscar nods for its technical achievements. Passengers was nominated for Best Original Score and Best Production Design at the 89th Academy Awards.)
The actress admitted that Passengers in part prompted her on-screen sabbatical during an interview with Vanity Fair in 2021. “I was not pumping out the quality that I should have,” she confessed. “I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right.”
Pulling back from the spotlight after, Jennifer made the intense 2017 flick Mother! with ex Darren Aronofsky and appeared in the 2019’s spy movie Red Sparrow before getting to take a serious break. She returned to the screen in late 2021 with Adam McKay’s star-studded Netflix satire Don’t Look Up. Next, she stars in the intimate drama Causeway, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and streams on Apple TV+ starting Nov. 4.+