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Jennifer Lawrence reveals plans to direct, will take on Project Delirium

"Now I actually feel ready."

Clarisse Loughrey
Wednesday 25 November 2015 13:38 EST
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Update 26/11: Lawrence has now confirmed she's signed on to make her directorial debut with Project Delirium, based on an article from The New Yorker detailing the chemical warfare experiments which took place during the Cold War. She spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the decision. “It’s funny, I’ve wanted to direct since I was 16 and always thought I should start making steps towards that. If I had tried to do it earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready. Now I actually feel ready.”

Determined to make every other soul in their mid-20s feel like an utter disappointment, Hollywood's highest-paid actress is now looking to add a directorial debut to her long list of accomplishments.

Gracing this month's cover of Vogue magazine, the 25 year-old Hunger Games star took time to discuss her long-brewing dream to step behind the lens. “I want to direct. But I would rather just do it than talk about it.”

She's been prepping herself for the job by attending editing sessions on David O. Russell's Joy, in which she's already acquired awards buzz for her starring role. “It’s funny because I’m like, This process is so unique to him. There’s almost nothing I can take away from it. It would be like watching a dolphin and being like, Oh! So that’s how you swim in the ocean!”

Though it's so easy to dismiss the never-ending onslaught of stars-turned-directors, churning out movies forever doomed to become fleeting vanity projects, Lawrence's own position in Hollywood does express a different kind of potential. Like Angelina Jolie's own impassioned directorial works, female-directed films of such high profile will always have the potential to produce a positive impact on the field in general.

In 2012, women constituted only 9% of directors working on the top 250 films. It's a miserable statistic, and so there's hope that Lawrence's own highly-publicised battle for equal pay means she could potentially make for a powerful vocal point in the fight to rectify the place of women not just on screen, but in the multitude of technical and creative roles in cinema that have so far seen a drastic lack of opportunities. 

Lawrence has also recently taken the leap into screenwriting, collaborating with Amy Schumer on an upcoming comedy. And with the pair set to play sisters, their onscreen chemistry is sure to the reflect the real life friendship that left the internet wild for the pair's recent jet ski adventures. 
 

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer
Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer (Getty)

Lawrence can currently be seen in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2; David O. Russell's Joy hits screens on 1 January.

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