Jennifer Lawrence may need to re-learn the history of the movie industry. While it’s no secret that she rose to international fame with her role as Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games” film series, she’s definitely not the first female action hero in cinema.
Thus, the Oscar-winning actress has been widely criticized after claiming that there’s no female action movie lead before her. Speaking with Viola Davis for Variety’s Actors on Actors about female action heroes, she said, “I remember when I was doing ‘Hunger Games’, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work – because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”
She added, “And it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies. To keep certain people in the same positions that they’ve always been in.”
Many quickly disagreed with Lawrence as Franklin Leonard, founder of The Black List, said on Twitter in response to the interview, “It is untrue that no one had ever put a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in ‘Hunger Games’. It is absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against women driven action movies because of this ridiculous belief about who identifies with whom.”
Axios business editor Dan Primack pointed out female action heroes before Lawrence, “Sigourney Weaver (Aliens), Linda Hamilton (Terminator), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill), any of the Charlie’s Angels, etc. might beg to differ…”
Meghan McCain also argued, “What about Ripley in Alien and Sarah Connor in Terminator? Because I was obsessed with them growing up…” Game Informer associate editor John Carson tweeted, “I’m sorry, what???”, including a gif of Thurman from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” franchise.
“how is it possible to be this wrong. has no one ever heard of Sigourney Weaver or Pam Grier or…,” another user reacted. Someone listed other female action movie leads before Lawrence, “oh honey, no. Linda Hamilton, Sigourney Weaver, Milla Jovovich, [Angelina Jolie], even Charlize Theron did Aeon Flux in 2005. Come on man.”
Lawrence has not responded to the backlash. Despite her pride in leading “The Hunger Games” film franchise, the 32-year-old star has expressed her concern for potentially setting a bad example for young audience regarding body image. “I remember the biggest conversation was ‘How much weight are you going to lose?’ ” she said in the same interview.
She continued sharing, “Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don’t know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can’t because they’re not a certain weight. And I can’t let that seep into my brain, either.”
