Jennifer Lawrence And Donald Sutherland Had The Sweetest Co-Star Relationship
Sadly, there's been another addition to our list of stars we've lost in 2024. Renowned actor Donald Sutherland died on June 20 at the age of 88. One of his more recent, well-known roles was as President Coriolanus Snow in the first four movies of "The Hunger Games" franchise. He was the primary antagonist in the films while Jennifer Lawrence played protagonist Katniss Everdeen. While the two were enemies on-screen, off-screen they had a very sweet friendship.
Lawrence was in her early 20s when she started playing the role in "The Hunger Games" that helped catapult her to superstardom with just a few credits before that. Sutherland, on the other hand, was in his mid 70s and had been in the business for decades. It seems fair to say that he knew a fair amount about the business, and while some seasoned Hollywood stars might not be too impressed with their far younger co-stars, much less form close bonds with them, that wasn't the case with Sutherland and Lawrence. In 2014, Sutherland showed just how impressed he was with Lawrence's acting chops. "When I worked with her," Sutherland told E! in 2014, "I realized the child was a genius. She's the right person at the right time in the sense of Joan of Arc or Jesus Christ, any genius, in that sense." High praise indeed!
Donald Sutherland was deeply impressed with Jennifer Lawrence
As close as the two of them were, when Donald Sutherland was promoting "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," he told E! that sometimes Jennifer Lawrence's presence made him act a little strange: "I'm awkward in her presence. When I see her, I babble. When I meet her coming out of an elevator, I'm blub, blub."
But that awkwardness seems like it came from just how much admiration Sutherland had for his young co-star. In the same interview, he also referred to Lawrence as someone who "channels epiphanies. She's brilliant, she's brilliant. She's unlike other performers."
The respect Sutherland had for Lawrence's work was definitely not a one-way street. Their relationship was so close that two years after the fourth "The Hunger Games" movie was released, Lawrence was on-hand at the 2017 Governors Awards when Sutherland was given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Not only was she there, she was selected to give a speech in his honor. In it, Lawrence said, "Donald is the most committed, professional, kind person I had ever met. I don't know why he took me under his wing the way he did," via YouTube.
Jennifer Lawrence received guidance from Donald Sutherland
While it's expected that the presenter praises the recipient in a speech like the one Jennifer Lawrence gave for Donald Sutherland, she seemed completely genuine as she raved about his career. She questioned why he hadn't received an Oscar before this, and she said his work was "movie magic."
Beyond her love for his work, Lawrence talked about their off-screen interactions. She revealed that they would chat between "Hunger Games" scenes — no method acting here with the on-screen enemies — and it sounds like he was a bit of a kind mentor to his younger co-star, even if he may have felt that he was, as he put it, sometimes babbling in her presence. She also said that Sutherland gave her books to read, and one of them went on to become her favorite — "Anna Karenina."
Then, in what is now a particularly heartbreaking sentiment, when Sutherland took the stage to accept the Honorary Oscar, he thanked her and his other presenter and said, "I'd love to invite them to my funeral." There's been no public response from Lawrence, at the time of this writing, about Sutherland's death, but we're sure that she's missing her good friend and co-star.