Jennifer Lawrence Was “At Peace” With The Thought Of Leaving Hollywood

Following the 2019 release of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Jennifer Lawrence took a two-year break from acting. She didn’t return to the screen until Don’t Look Up in 2021, and now, she is reflecting on her hiatus. During an Oct. 17 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Lawrence opened up about what it was like to leave Hollywood — and revealed if she ever worried about not being able to re-enter the spotlight.

“I took a little time,” Lawrence told Norton about her acting hiatus, per Variety. “I was working all of my twenties, and then I was like… what’s out here? What’s going on?”

When he asked if she was ever concerned about not being able to get back to her career, Lawrence had a surprising answer. “I was at peace with that possibility of that happening. [Hollywood] is a lot,” she said. “I think I would have been fine, but also I would’ve been really upset. I don’t know.”

Lawrence also joked about the timing of her break, which happened to coincide with lockdown. “I made Covid happen,” she quipped, per People. “I was just like, ‘I want to take a break.’ They were like, ‘The world is shutting down.’”

The actor, who is starring in the psychological dark comedy drama Die My Love alongside Robert Pattinson, previously opened up why she took a break from acting. “I was not pumping out the quality that I should have,” she told Vanity Fair in 2021.

“I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?’” she explained at the time. “I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life. Working made me feel like nobody could be mad at me: ‘Okay, I said yes, we’re doing it. Nobody’s mad.’ And then I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence. So that kind of shook me out of thinking that work or your career can bring any kind of peace to your soul.”