Jennifer Lawrence claims there were no female action stars before Hunger Games

Last Updated on December 13, 2022

2012’s The Hunger Games was a major breakthrough for Jennifer Lawrence, but recent comments from the actress (who played Katniss Everdeen) are giving much more importance to the movie than it deserves.

In a new interview, Jennifer Lawrence 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.” You can imagine how well this is sitting…

Clearly Jennifer Lawrence is wrong here. You can run through the last 50 years of movies and find a fantastic collection of butt-kickin’ females leading through way through action flicks. There is the barrage of exploitation action revenge movies of the ‘70s, the iconic Pam Grier flicks like Coffy and Foxy Brown, Uma Thurman’s outing as The Bride in Kill Bill, and, perhaps best of all, Sigourney Weaver’s incredible and complex turn as Ellen Ripley in Aliens. Heck, even the year before the first Hunger Games movie saw Haywire with Gina Carano.

However, Lawrence elaborated on her thoughts and may have found a better point to harp on. “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.”

Jennifer has gone to have a prolific career, with four Academy Award nominations and one win. While her comments about her role in movie history are definitely inaccurate, the box office numbers of The Hunger Games show the impact the movie–and her character–has had.

What do you think about Jennifer Lawrence’s comments? What is your favorite female-led action movie? Let us know below!