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Jennifer Lawrence Clarifies Her Comments About Female Action Heroes After Drawing Backlash

Jennifer Lawrence Clarifies Her Comments About Female Action Heroes After Drawing Backlash

Jennifer Lawrence is being defended by fans after she faced backlash over a comment she made about female action heroes in a new interview. She has also spoken out to clarify the remarks.

The 32-year-old actress sat down a Variety Actors on Actors interview with Viola Davis, who became an action star this year with her movie The Woman King.

Jennifer is known for playing Katniss in The Hunger Games series and Mystique in the X-Men movies.

Click inside to read the comment that received backlash, plus her clarification…

“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. 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,” Jennifer said.

Jennifer received backlash for essentially calling herself the first female action star, though she didn’t mean to imply that.

Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Denise Crosby took offense to the comments and tweeted, “Hey Jennifer Lawrence, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to thank the many boys/men who were allowed to completely identify with a strong female character long before you were even born. There are a couple of us…”

Lots of fans took to Twitter to defend Jennifer amid the backlash.

“It’s incredible how Jennifer Lawrence is making a great point here about films marketed to the young demographic here and it’s being misconstrued and later in the interview mentions how much she despises press because everyone takes things out of context so easily,” one fan wrote.

Another said, “This controversy is stupid. Yes, Jennifer Lawrence is wrong about female led action movies, but her main thesis is correct. Engage with that, maybe you’ll learn something.”

After the quotes went viral, Jennifer spoke to THR to clarify what she said.

“That’s certainly not what I meant to say at all. I know that I am not the only woman who has ever led an action film. What I meant to emphasize was how good it feels. And I meant that with Viola — to blow past these old myths that you hear about … about the chatter that you would hear around that kind of thing. But it was my blunder and it came out wrong. I had nerves talking to a living legend,” she said.

Jennifer recently revealed how she feels about the Hunger Games prequel movie and possible future remakes.

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Photos: Getty
Posted to: Jennifer Lawrence