Jennifer Lawrence Recalls Leaving Home at 14: 'My Relationship with Home Has Always Been Complicated'

Jennifer Lawrence is getting candid about her "complicated" relationship to her home.

The actress previously opened up about dropping out of school as a teenager in order to "forge my own path," which led her to a breakout Oscar-nominated performance in 2010's Winter's Bone and an A-list movie career. Speaking at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday for the premiere of her movie Causeway, Lawrence, 32, shared how she could relate to the drama's story.

"I felt something in my gut when I read this, that immediate, 'We have to make this' [feeling]. I identify with that feeling of trying to find your home, to find where you have purpose," she said, according to Entertainment Weekly, getting emotional onstage. "I left home when I was 14. My relationship with home has always been complicated."

In Causeway, which also stars Brian Tyree Henry and is directed by Lila Neugebauer, Lawrence plays a soldier struggling to adjust back to her life after returning home to New Orleans.

On 60 Minutes back in 2018, Lawrence, who grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, opened up about not finishing school, venturing out from home at a young age and how reading a script was the first time she felt smart in her life.

RELATED: Jennifer Lawrence Says She 'Worked So Hard' to 'Forgive' Her Dad for Differing Political Views

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"I struggled through school. I never felt very smart. And when I'm reading this script, and I feel like I know exactly what it would look like if somebody felt that way, that was a whole part of my brain that I didn't even know existed," she said at the time. "Something that I could be confident in. And I didn't want to let it go."

"It's so hard to explain," continued Lawrence, "it was just an overwhelming feeling of: 'I get this. This is what I was meant to do.' "

Lawrence said she had to convince her parents to let her pursue acting at the age of 14 — and she never looked back. "I dropped out of middle school. I don't technically have a GED or a diploma. I am self-educated," she added at the time.

Did she regret the decision? "No. I really don't. I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do and I didn't want anything getting in the way of it. Even friends, for many years, were not as important to me as my career from the age of 14."

Causeway debuts on Apple TV+ on Nov. 4.