Jennifer Lawrence Recalls Being Turned Down for Lead Role in ‘Twilight’

Jennifer Lawrence in white on the red carpet

(Image credit: Getty)

published 27 June 2023

Jennifer Lawrence is an A-list actress now, but that wasn’t always the case. Everyone has to start somewhere and, per Access, even J. Law has been turned down on the spot. (Happens to the best of us.)

The actress—Academy Award winning, at that—opened up on “The Rewatchables” podcast about auditioning for Twilight and “immediately” being turned down for the role.

Lawrence auditioned to play Bella Swan in the hit movie franchise, a part that ultimately ended up going to Kristen Stewart.

“I auditioned for Twilight,” Lawrence said. “They turned me down immediately. I didn’t even get a callback.”

Don’t worry, though—while Twilight might not have been her franchise, there was another one that was. You may have heard of it? The Hunger Games, where Lawrence played Katniss Everdeen. Lawrence almost didn’t take on the role, though, after seeing how big of a hit Twilight became.

“I almost didn’t do Hunger Games because Twilight had come out and that fandom had happened,” she said. “When I was trying to talk to people about making this decision after they offered it to me, I was just like ‘I don’t know.’ It was so hard to explain to people, like, I don’t think you understand this level of fame.”

Jennifer Lawrence in a black dress on the red carpet

Lawrence went on to star in films like Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Don’t Look Up; her next release is the comedy No Hard Feelings, where she plays a woman hired by a college student’s parents to break him out of his shell before he leaves home.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.

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