Interview | Jennifer Lawrence knew she wanted to do Die My Love from the beginning: ‘It starts with empathy’
Jennifer Lawrence gives one of her very best performances in the psychological drama Die My Love. It was Martin Scorsese who first thought of Jennifer Lawrence after reading the book by Argentine author Ariana Harwicz. The film’s journey began there, as Lawrence knew at once that she wanted to play the central character, Grace- a woman who becomes increasingly unmoored and volatile after giving birth to her first child. It was she who suggested Lynne Ramsay direct it.
HT sat down for an online roundtable interaction with the Academy Award-winning star, who spoke about playing this woman in all her abandon and fury, and collaborating with co-star Robert Pattinson.
‘None of the consequences are real!’
Lawrence holds the film from the first scene itself, infusing it with a fierce unpredictability. Her Grace goes through some extreme emotions in the film. As an actor, was there any entry point for her to channel them on screen? How were those days on set, collaborating with Lynne?
She says, “On the day, it is normally about channelling adrenaline. It starts with empathy, imagining what the person is going through. Putting myself in Grace’s shoes and taking myself out. The great part about my job is that I get to call up these emotions and get carried away, and when they call, ‘Cut!’ none of the consequences are real! I just walk walk away with a little bit of a high (laughs).”
But in Die My Love, she is not just an actor but also a producer. Lawrence explains that she is not so sure if those two roles can be segregated in this instance. “I was a producer in the sense that I brought the book to Lynne and connected her to the project,” she says. “I think it was a decision of me being excited to make this happen. So yes for me it was like a ‘chicken or an egg who came first’ kind of a situation truly. I wanted to make it and I wanted to be in it (smiles) and it was a simultaneous decision.”
“I definitely did know that I wanted to play Grace. The producing starts first, where we set on things like who is going to direct this or how are we going to get this made, and then I get to do the fun part,” she adds.
On one scene from the film she will always remember
In one particular scene in Die My Love, she rips apart the bathroom- scratching the painted walls, squeezing the shampoo bottle and damaging everything that she lays her eyes on. Her nails are broken, her fingers bleed.
The actor confesses that it is the scene that she will never forget. “I always think about though is the one in the bathroom. We could do only take of it, and the adrenaline build-up to that. The space was so small and there was only space for me and Chris [Chow, camera operator], and it was on film. There were so many technical issues that I couldn’t not be aware of but then had to go to a different place and not be aware of any of it. So that is one scene that I will probably remember my whole life! It was so fun to do! We might have imagined what it must be like to do it in real life and to do it actually was great,” she says.
On working with Robert Pattinson
In Die My Love, Jennifer’s husband is played by Robert Pattinson. The actor opened up about the collaboration and called him an “amazing actor.”
She adds, “You can’t really prepare before you get there and you don’t know what the other actor is going to give you and what is going to happen… but Rob was so good at putting more spine into his character and making him stronger. It gave me so much more to bounce off of, and he totally changed my performance with his. He is also just a sweet person. We both had young kids while shooting; he had a new baby. So we could also get to that headspace easily, together.”
Die My Love is available to watch on Mubi India.
