Jennifer Lawrence definitely has a fan in Orange is the New Black actress Lori Petty. Before she landed roles in The Hunger Games and X-Men: Days of Future Past, Lawrence appeared in Petty’s directorial effort The Poker House. The film tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who survives a vicious rape at the hands of her mother’s pimp. According to ABC News, the movie is loosely based on the Tank Girl star’s own experiences as a teenager.
Although Jennifer appeared also in writer-director Jason Freeland’s Garden Party back in 2008, The Poker House essentially gave Lawrence her first opportunity to shine in a feature-length motion picture. Prior to these films, the award-winning actress had only appeared in a handful of television shows.
Petty told The Daily Beast that she was completely blown away by Lawrence’s dedication to the role. Since the production was operating on a small budget (around $1.5 million), they had to work quickly to get the story in front of the camera. This required filming quite a few scenes every day, though Lawrence was apparently up to the task.
Petty explained:
“Look, she deserves one hundred percent of her success, period. In addition to that, I think I passed along 25 years of experience of being an actress to her… She’s amazing and the camera loves her, and that’s why I cast her.
The League of Their Own star continued:
“She’s going to be around forever and ever. I wrote her half-page monologues, and she’d just knock them out of the park. It was a small budget, under $1.5 million, and she was doing like eight pages a day. I went up to her mom and said, ‘What do we do after lunch? I don’t want her to crash!’ and she went, ‘Oh no, she’s fine. This is what she does.’ She’s remarkable, that kid.”
