Decider Debate: Is Jennifer Lawrence A Bad Actress?

Jennifer Lawrence turns 24 years old today and she’s already racked up three Academy Award nominations, one Oscar win, and the title of “America’s Sweetheart.” She might be the one actress in Hollywood that every person on tumblr wants to be best friends with, but she’s not without her detractors. Some people find her off-screen screwball persona annoying and point to great editing as the secret to her success. So, is Jennifer Lawrence as good an actress as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is proclaiming her to be, or is she a freaking mess? Decider’s own Tyler Coates and Meghan O’Keefe are split on the issue and are duking it out in a Decider Debate!

Meghan: Jennifer Lawrence is a very good actress.

Tyler: She’s the worst. The end.

Meghan: Don’t talk about her like she’s Jessica Biel! She does have talent. She has three Oscar nominations and one win and she’s still only 24. Maybe you don’t like her style of acting, but she has a unique ability to command an audience’s full attention when she’s on screen. If anything, that’s kind of her biggest problem as a performer. She eats up the screen and leaves nothing left for anyone else around her.

Tyler: OK, OK. I’m being too hard on her, and also slightly hyperbolic. I will admit that most of my dislike for Jennifer Lawrence is her off-camera persona. I know everyone thinks she’s so cool and real and “fresh” because she says wacky things like how she loves to eat and drink and throw up at Oscar parties. And maybe it’s because I’m years beyond the period of my life when I was acting like that — going to parties, drinking too much, passing out on coat beds, etc. I just think she seems like she’d be awful to hang out with! But I’m astounded that you think she is a very good actor. Yes, she’s gotten a lot of nominations (and one Oscar, which she did not deserve, but I’ll get to that later). Please, tell me more.

Meghan: First, I want to address the fact that most of your dislike of her stems from her public persona. We’re not debating whether or not you find her annoying. I don’t care if you want to be her BFF. We’re talking about her ability to transform herself and connect with audiences in a meaningful emotional way. I completely understand why her off-screen persona grates you. I mean, Jessica Chastain is a performer whose work I always get excited to see, and who I actually think is probably nice in real life, and yet the way she comes across in interviews irks me to no end — but that’s a whole other discussion. So, I hear the, “Ugh, I can’t stand someone because of that one interview they did where they said this thing” argument.

Jennifer Lawrence, though, has been unique in her ability to connect with contemporary mainstream audiences. Hollywood keeps trying to replicate her, but Shailene Woodley isn’t going to ever reach her level of stardom, and we have yet to see if Emma Stone can hold her own opposite the best actors of her generation in serious roles (which she may prove this winter in Birdman). In one year, Lawrence convincingly played an emotionally stunted teenager tasked with murdering children on live television and played a believably psycho dance enthusiast from Philadelphia. So, in my mind, she has range, but more importantly, her performances do emotionally affect people. I still can’t watch the scene where she addresses District 11 about Rue’s death in Catching Fire without choking up.

Tyler: Well, I’d argue that her likability as a public persona directly influences her popularity as an actress. She’s the typical “cool girl,” winning you over with her personality rather than, well, talent. Now, clearly this is all going to be subjective here, but I’m going to make the following arguments: Silver Linings Playbook was a very bad movie (it’s the second movie I have ever walked out of), one that treated mental illness with such superficiality and relied on the notion that everyone had forgotten they had already seen As Good As It Gets. She didn’t really bring much to that role, and she didn’t have to; there wasn’t much to that role. It was a hysterical female character that anyone with enough flash could have pulled together. Now, I like The Hunger Games films, but part of the reason I enjoy them is because they are fantasy. I don’t see a lot of real human emotion in them, and that makes it easier for her to play the role of Katniss: none of us actually experience the things that happen in that movie; we base them on what we assume those emotions would look like in those hypothetical situations.

But let’s get to the real root of my issue with Jennifer Lawrence: she is not a good actor. In fact, I don’t think she really acts all that much. American Hustle is the perfect example of this. She’s hilariously miscast, and she does nothing with that character except vamp and flip her hair. She’s not even on screen for longer than three seconds at a time, and I kept saying during the last awards season that she should be thanking her editor for her award before anyone else — it’s not her performance that seemed put together, it was the guy who made it appear to have some semblance of emotional realism.

Meghan: I will not disagree that upon inspection both Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle are rather awful films. In fact, I would add that David O. Russell not only should thank his editors every day of his damn life, but that he should give every cent he has in his bank account to his casting directors. American Hustle is a ludicrous film that should never have been included in the Awards discussions last year (especially since it cockblocked the inclusion of my favorite film of 2013: Inside Llewyn Davis), and yes, Lawrence was miscast. That’s not her fault, though, and every time she was on screen she made the most of it. She kind of made the messy film enjoyable to watch and my favorite scene in the whole film was the dinner she has with Jack Huston’s character. I watched her eyes and listened to her character speak and for the first time, I wondered if the whole time her character had really been the master conman or, in fact, the biggest victim. Her character’s potential duplicity is literally the one thing I still find myself thinking about months after seeing that film.

I also want to add that it’s true her character in Silver Linings Playbook was a charicature of hysteria, but if you look at most of the best female parts in Hollywood right now, you see that they are all actually quite bad.

Furthermore, thank you for bringing up As Good As It Gets, because I relish any opportunity to think about Verdell the dog.

Tyler: Verdell would be more convincing in any role than Jennifer Lawrence.

I will accept what you’re saying, but I don’t think you’re proving she is a good actor! I think what you’re proving is that she’s entertaining to watch, which is definitely different. You could say the same for Matthew McConaughey, but he’s not a good actor — he has a lot of swagger and can light up a screen. If you put him on a stage, I don’t think he’d last longer than ten minutes before he got bored. Every time I see Jennifer Lawrence on an award show when she’s asked to read lines off of a teleprompter, I can’t help but notice that she freezes. Once she gets out of the comfort zone that is her own bubbly personality, she flounders. I think that’s indicative of a certain shallowness in terms of her acting ability. She can mug for the camera (or, even, be convincing in a drama, as she was in Winter’s Bone!), but I don’t think she’s a very skilled performer. Every emotion is on the surface, right out in the open. A movie star, yes. An actor? Hardly.

Meghan: I like that you compared her to Matthew McConaughey, because that’s a comparison I can completely see. Your argument makes me wonder if the real fuss about Jennifer Lawrence is focused not on her ability to act, but her potential to save the “movie star.” She’s one of the first people to come along in the last 10-15 years to possess that kind of magnetic onscreen charisma and she might be the last for a long time.

I still enjoy watching her onscreen and I do think she has some talent. I will add she is still only 24 years old. She has time to work on her craft and learn how to show more subtlety in her performances.

So, let’s end agreeing on these two points: 1) Jennifer Lawrence is good at being a movie star and 2) Verdell the dog is the best.

Tyler: If the only thing I got out of this debate is a fond memory for that little dog, so be it. We can be friends after all.

What do you think? Is Jennifer Lawrence a good actress or is she the worst? Sound off below!

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Photos: The Everett Collection