The 'Red Sparrow' star was slammed for her rudeness toward British actress Lumley when the latter introduced Lawrence as 'the hottest actress on the planet.'
- Feb 20, 2018
AceShowbiz - Jennifer Lawrence has been on the receiving end of an online backlash for a comment she made to host Joanna Lumley at the British Academy of Film and Television Awards on Sunday, February 18. She was accused of being "disrespectful" toward the British actress who praised her onstage.
The Mystique of the "X-Men" film series was on hand to present the award for Outstanding British Film and Lumley introduced her with a huge compliment. "And we start with the award for Outstanding British Film and who better to kick the whole evening off than the hottest actress on the planet?" Lumley said. "Soon to be seen in 'Red Sparrow', it's the ravishing Jennifer Lawrence."
The 27-year-old Academy Award-winning actress then appeared on stage and said, "Hi. That was a bit much, but thank you, Joanna."
Viewers immediately took to social media to criticize Lawrence's response to Lumley's praise. Some accused her of being "disrespectful," while some others called her a "spoiled brat" and "Miss Arrogance."
But Lawrence had some explanation to it. Speaking on Ronan Keating's Magic FM show on Monday, she said that it was "an inside joke" because they had chatted backstage before the ceremony began and discussed how she could be introduced. "After I just spent all backstage telling her how to be really nice to me. I wasn’t being rude, it was an inside joke," she claimed.
Lawrence went on saying that it was her humble reaction to the compliment. "Everybody thought that I was being rude. But to be fair, I couldn't have just walked out after she was like, 'biggest movie star in the world!!' And I'd just walked out and gone 'thank you Joanna'. It would have been like, 'so you agree? You think you're really pretty,' " she said.
In other news, a rep for Lawrence has denied report that the actress was planning on taking some time off from acting to focus on activism. She told ET, "I'm going to take the next year off. I'm going to be working with this organization as a part of Represent.Us ... trying to get young people engaged politically on a local level."
"It doesn't have anything to do with partisan [politics]," she added. "It's just anti-corruption and stuff trying to pass state by state laws that can help prevent corruption, fix our democracy."
However, Lawrence's rep says that she will return to work when one of her several projects in development is ready to go. She has been on board several films, including an untitled film with Amy Schumer, Ron Howard's Zelda Fitzgerald biopic "Zelda", Adam McKay's "Bad Blood" and Luca Guadagnino's "Burial Rites".
