(Carter Smith/Elle)Jennifer Lawrence may star in "The Hunger Games," but she vows that she will never engage in extreme dieting just to fit into Hollywood's rail-thin world.
In a new interview with Elle, the statuesque 22-year-old gets candid about the unattainable body standards in showbiz, revealing that, among her peers in the industry, she is inexplicably thought of as someone who is overweight. "In Hollywood, I'm obese," notes the Kentucky native. "I'm considered a fat actress." To make her point she adds, "I'm Val Kilmer in that one picture on the beach," referring to the 2007 photo of the actor in his bathing suit, which generated a slew of nasty headlines. She then goes on to talk about her food habits, saying, "I eat like a caveman. I'll be the only actress who doesn't have anorexia rumors."
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(Carter Smith/Elle)
While many actresses have gone to extremes to lose weight for various roles — think Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman in "Black Swan" or, more recently, Anne Hathaway in "Les Miserables" — Lawrence won't be one of them. "I'm never going to starve myself for a part," she tells Elle. "I don't want little girls to be like, 'Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I'm going to skip dinner." Instead, she wants to be a positive role model for her young "Hunger Games" fans. "That's something I was really conscious of during training [for the movie], when you're trying to get your body to look exactly right. I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong — not thin and underfed."
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Jennifer Lawrence (Carter Smith/Elle)Weight wasn't the only thing on Lawrence's mind during her chat with Elle. She also was open to talking about love. Dishing on her relationship with British actor Nicholas Hoult, whom she met on the 2010 set of "X Men," she gushes, "[My boyfriend] is honestly my best friend, and hopefully I'm his best friend, too. He's my favorite person to be around and makes me laugh harder than anybody." What do they do when they spend time together? "We can eat Cheetos and watch beach volleyball and we turn into two perverted Homer Simpsons, like, 'Oh, she's got a nice a--.' I never thought we'd have such different opinions on a--es."
Before the Games: Jennifer Lawrence
And although the Academy Award-nominated actress is pulling in huge paychecks with "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "X-Men: Days of Future Past" in the works, Lawrence says she tries to stay true to her modest beginnings. "Ten million dollars and I'm still living in my parents' condo," she says. "I've always lived in a tiny rat-infested apartment in New York, or a little condo in L.A., or a normal house in Kentucky. I think it would be very bizarre to live in a big mansion by myself."
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For more of Lawrence's interview, pick up the December issue of Elle, on newsstands November 13.
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