LONDON — Actress Jennifer Lawrence spoke about making some bold moves as she moves into the next phase of her career.
During an interview with BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball on Tuesday, the 26-year-old “Red Sparrow” star said her decision to take time off after leaving “X-Men: First Class” was because she wanted to take a break.
“Everybody got sick of me,” she said. “And I felt it was a new time and I wanted a break. So I kind of quit a couple years ago.”
In an interview on “Today” in May, Lawrence said that “there’s a lot of red tape to go through” to put movies together, and the grind has worn her down.
But despite leaving the Hollywood acting world behind for a spell, Lawrence says she made the right decision.
“I have the biggest obligations of all of us,” she said in the BBC interview. “I make movies that benefit a lot of people. I always do.”
Lawrence has since returned to the world of moviemaking, in which she’s become a global superstar, earning two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe, as well as an unprecedented $1 billion in global box office.
She stars in “Red Sparrow,” a geopolitical thriller, which was released in the U.S. on Friday. “I can’t get enough of movies about [bad] men trying to kill each other,” she said in the interview.
Lawrence is also taking on her biggest role yet in the upcoming “Red Sparrow” sequel, “Red Sparrow 2.”
“The sequel we’re writing right now, I can’t say much, but it’s all about the Intelligence Service and how things have changed,” she said. “So it’s something totally different for me.”
Lawrence’s intense style choices in “Red Sparrow” have also made headlines.
“I really do think it’s my role,” she said. “I’m a character actress. I like to improvise.”
While the star of “Winter’s Bone” and “Silver Linings Playbook” has come under fire from critics for going too far in her movie costumes, she doesn’t mind the grime of being a character actress.
“I don’t care if you say what I say,” she said. “I’m making other people laugh. If you think I’m a character actress, that’s cool. I love character actors.”
Lawrence said she also loves the nature of her work.
“I love the fact that I get to do it with everything in me,” she said. “I get to have an opinion, and that’s like a gift.”