Jennifer Lawrence Dominates in Red Lipstick and Jaw-Dropping Sex Appeal in Dior’s New Campaign
There are layers to reaching Jennifer Lawrence—the security guards outside of the Los Angeles home where she is shooting a campaign for Dior’s new fragrance, Joy, on an early summer morning; the canopies of tents on the property, filled with attentive lighting crews and gossip; the body double who—if this writer’s own double take is any indication—is doing an excellent job. The craft services cart with a memorable red pepper dip. The front door to the home, where gatekeepers keep track of who is coming and going; and then—an actual moat. A walkway stretches from the door to the building’s interior, spanning a compact body of water that further separates the world from Jennifer Lawrence, Hollywood’s third highest paid actress. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, Lawrence can be seen in the backyard, bouncing on a trampoline in front of cameras; a sheer white dress over a boned corset rising and falling with her. Music, played for trampolining, is faintly audible. “All jump songs,” Lawrence explains later of tracks like House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and Destiny Child’s “Jumpin’, Jumpin’ ”—the latter of which, she adds, “was I believe the first song Beyoncé ever wrote.”
It feels like a crew of 100 is on hand to produce a short film for Joy, Dior’s first new fragrance in 20 years. Lawrence has been a face of the fashion house’s ready-to-wear for more than six years, but it makes special sense that the avid boater, known wine enthusiast, freestyle seat-hurdler, and proud purveyor of Kardashian gossip will now be physically embodying a fragrance named for a spirit of jubilation. It’s “a marathon of a shoot,” says Lawrence, who has been running, bouncing, and diving into the pool so frequently that her hair—freshly dyed platinum—has started to turn green. Francis Lawrence, who worked with J.Law in Red Sparrow and the Hunger Games franchise, is directing, alongside Emmanuel Lubezki, who won the Oscar for Cinematography for the films Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant. “The fact that I’m working with Chivo on this blows my mind,” the actress said of the latter; nicknamed “the goat” in Spanish. Having worked together extensively, the Lawrences have a shorthand. “Aesthetically, I think he’s the most talented person I’ve ever worked with,” said the actress of the director. “He’s good at getting tones. He’ll bring up something funny from our past, or make my best friend say something that makes me really laugh.” (Today, the best friend in question is Laura Ternosky, who is performing duties as Lawrence’s assistant but, per Lawrence, is “dying to leave.”) “Or he likes this look I do when I really, really want to go home,” the actress continued. “I can never just do it, but he can coax it out of me. He’s my Jane Goodall.”
Lawrence was speaking from a quiet room in the house—having completed the bouncing and been shuttled inside—while her publicist simultaneously smiled warmly and struck a firm presence at the door. She had changed into cropped Levi’s, gray Nike slides and a white logo T-shirt that said Dior. She was wearing Joy on her wrist, and extended her multimillion-dollar arm so that I could smell it. “It’s fresh to me—so many perfumes are too alcohol-y; too fume-y,” she said, “I smelled the ingredients”—flowers, citrus, cedar, sandalwood, and musk—“on a trip to France, but today was the first time I experienced the finished product, and I’m really happy with it.”
Lawrence’s lips were glossy and I inquired about them. “This is actually true,” she said reaching for a tube from her bag. “It’s called Dior Lip Glow and I always have it with me, because it’s really ChapStick but adds a little color, so it makes me look like I made an effort.” Something that had not been lacking that day was effort. Lawrence was wearing faux eyelashes and a full face of makeup—a look she admitted to loving. Actually, her exact words upon being asked about the moment when she feels most beautiful were: “After three hours of basically prosthetic makeup. The more fake I have on me, the prettier I feel.”
In case Google Image is not a feature of your web browser: Lawrence is striking in makeup; even on a day when she claimed to have gone extreme prosthetic, it didn’t look like she was wearing much at all. She has smooth, pearly skin, thanks in part to Georgia Louise facials (“I always take that rose quartz thing home and I’m like—I’ll use this! And then . . . never,” she said, of the infamous butterfly-shaped crystal the New York facialist sends away with clients). Off camera, Lawrence’s everyday routine is the chic stuff of stars who seem, in brief moments, “just like us!” “I don’t wear makeup. I always wear sunblock. Low bun. Dior Lip Glow. Sunglasses.”
The physicality of the shoot—now in its fifth day—made Lawrence exhausted every night, she admitted, though it wasn’t as grueling as the two weeks she once spent in a water tank filming the gravity bubble for 2016’s Passengers. “That was very hard because I couldn’t check my phone,” she said, unblinking as she delivered the joke. To get through the demands of this one, she was frank about her coping mechanisms: “I start complaining. I have a pretty strict complaining regimen that I try to stick to. And I eat.”
Lawrence eats and that should be no revelation, but her candor on this topic cuts through a lot of typical celebrity lip service. She trains with Kit Rich, with whom she worked for Red Sparrow: half cardio, half Pilates; using only her body weight for resistance. In interviews, she makes a point to note that the physical elements of being an actress means the way she trains and eats isn’t exactly normal, and also that she isn’t just good genes. “I don’t like when people say, ‘I only do this or eat this,’ ” says Lawrence, “Because I eat. I’m not very strict with my diet: If I want a piece of pizza, I eat a piece of pizza. But I do work out more than normal because I have a certain way that I want to look, and a way that I want to fit into my clothes. I get photographed when I’m not asking for it, so there’s added pressure to look and feel your best. For me, it’s easier to put that extra effort into the gym instead of putting the extra effort into: ‘Oh no, I can’t eat that.’ ”
The publicist signals the cameras are ready for Lawrence again; the actress slips out of her chair, and we all walk back into the main room, atop zigzagging paper walkways to protect the floor, strung with lights, buzzing with security guards, videographers, and crew. And with that, Hollywood’s biggest movie star charismatically steps back on set, wends gracefully through the wires—and sidles right back up to that pool.
Dior.com
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