Jennifer Lawrence Cast as Steven Spielberg’s First Female Lead in 30 Years
Welcome... to 1985 Park.
1985: the entire Mary Sue staff—those of us who’d been born, anyway—were in diapers, the Nintendo Entertainment System first came to America, and Steven Spielberg had The Color Purple in theaters, starring Whoopi Goldberg. Yes, it’s been that long since Steven Spielberg directed a movie with a female lead.
Warner Bros. secured the rights to It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, the memoir of photojournalist Lynsey Addario, just yesterday, and Spielberg is slated to direct with Jennifer Lawrence playing Addario.
Addario’s work tends to focus on women in male-dominated societies and human rights issues, so like The Color Purple, expect this female-led film to have something to say about gender in society. Or we could live in a world where people make movies about women just because, but I’m not exactly sure we’re there yet. (See: the whole 30-year gap thing.) But until we get there, tackling those issues head-on sounds like a great idea if that’s where this goes.
We’re a little concerned that Lawrence is a bit young for the role—not because she won’t completely knock it out of the park, but Addario is currently 41, and it would’ve been a great opportunity to give a quality role to an actress over 40—Lawrence is 24—which is another thing that doesn’t happen very often. Hopefully, the reasoning is as simple and understandable as the movie will cover a large stretch of Addario’s life, and it’d be easier to make JLaw look older than to Benjamin Button someone else to look younger.
Of course, there’s also the strong possibility that the decision is $$$-related, because Jennifer Lawrence is a huge, massive monster of a star right now.
See? Monster.
(via UPROXX)
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