The two Hollywood icons took to the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night and fans got to hear all about their work together.
The frequent director-actress collaborators got candid about working together. The duo has collaborated on a trio of films together —Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy, which grosses a very impressive $588.7M at the global box office.
The first time the two worked together was on Silver Linings Playbook. But Russell had his doubts working with the young actress and she was the last to board the project.
“For Silver Linings,” he said, “we thought you were too young and there were other actresses in the front of the line who were close to getting the role.”
But getting to work with Russell’s was a formative experience for Lawrence who told the director, “You shaped me.”
“I would put it this way: She showed up and she was, like, a raw talent that had no neuroses and no self-consciousness,” Russell said. “She was completely fearless. She would come into the scene like a weather system and leave me and Bob [De Niro] and Bradley [Cooper] and Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker just kind of like, wow.”
By the time he began working on American Hustle Russell knew he wanted to work with Lawrence but she was “technically not available.”
“I called her up on her vacation and I said, ‘I feel like I would be remiss as your friend if I did not give you one last chance to say no to this role,” he recalled. “You said, ‘will I get to have big hair and long nails and be crazy?’ And I said yes, and you said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
