Jennifer Lawrence's Nude Scenes In Red Sparrow Changed Her Forever

In her 2018 spy drama "Red Sparrow," Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence bared it all — and according to an interview with her at the movie's New York premiere, it actually helped her deal with some trauma from her past.

As Lawrence told Variety at Manhattan's Lincoln Center before the movie premiered, her nude scenes in "Red Sparrow" were vital in overcoming her own emotional fallout from a 2014 hacking that released some of the actress' private intimate photos to the entire world. Unfortunately, when Lawrence's photos hacked — despite the fact that they were, again, private photos intended for one recipient — she was subject to a lot of blame for taking the photos in the first place. According to her, "Red Sparrow" helped her mentally reclaim her own image, particularly because her character Dominika was just so different from any role she'd taken before.

"The insecurity and fear of being judged for getting nude, what I went through, should that dictate decisions I make for the rest of my life? This movie changed that and I didn't even realize how important changing that mentality was until it was done," Lawrence told reporter Alexa Harrison. "But I also really challenged myself in ways that I never really had before. The foreign accent. The dancing. It was really taking on a very different leaf."

In "Red Sparrow," Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a ballerina who suffers from an injury and ultimately becomes a spy after witnessing a top-secret assassination — and as a spy, Dominika ends up seducing marks, including a CIA operative named Nate Nash (Taron Egerton). Still, it's heartening to know that off-screen, Lawrence had artistic freedom and complete say over everything, and worked it all out with Francis Lawrence, her frequent "Hunger Games" collaborator and director, before they filmed sensitive scenes.

"We talked about it extensively, which was really important for showing up on the day and there being no surprises," Jennifer told Variety. "I knew exactly what was going on and also there was one moment he came out to give me a note and just looked at me like I had clothes, and then I just felt like I had clothes on. I was surrounded by professionals and everybody was completely professional."

As for Francis Lawrence, the director said that the other Lawrence was "the first person to see the movie as a whole with those scenes to be able to say 'I'm with it' or 'we need to talk and make some changes.' And she was totally with it. She didn't have me pull anything." It's always best when an actor has total agency over their most vulnerable moments on set, and clearly, "Red Sparrow" was an important experience for Lawrence.

Years later, Jennifer Lawrence went completely nude on-screen again — but this time, it was in a comedy, and it was particularly bold considering that the film required full-frontal nudity from the actress. In the 2023 comedy "No Hard Feelings," Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, who's down on her luck and in need of some quick cash and a car (so she can keep working as an Uber driver) ... which is why she answers a Craigslist ad from two parents who want their son to, well, "make a friend" before he goes off to college. Maddie sets out to seduce and deflower their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman, who deferred from Harvard for a year to take the role), and during one of their disastrous dates, the two skinny dip off the coast of Montauk in New York. When they leave the water, they realize some locals have stolen their clothes, at which point Maddie, completely naked, goes absolutely feral and beats the crap out of them.

In an interview alongside Feldman in Variety, Lawrence said she didn't hesitate for a second when it came to this scene. "Everyone in my life and my team is doing the right thing and going, 'Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?'" Lawrence said. "I didn't even have a second thought. It was hilarious to me." She also told People Magazine that she just dove headfirst into the scene, so to speak: "I took a deep breath and then I disrobed."

"Red Sparrow" may have been a freeing experience for Jennifer Lawrence for personal reasons, but unfortunately, the movie itself landed firmly in what one might call the actress' "flop era." Lawrence — who led the "Hunger Games" franchise as Katniss Everdeen from 2012 to 2015 and won an Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook" in 2012 — became one of Hollywood's most in-demand performers before a string of movies like David O. Russell's biopic "Joy," the wrong-footed space drama "Passengers," then-boyfriend Darren Aronofsky's experimental horror film "Mother!," and the "X-Men" film "Dark Phoenix" brought down her public image. After that and "Red Sparrow," which also received middling reviews, Lawrence took a hiatus from acting for a while.

During her time away, Lawrence married art gallery director Cooke Maroney, and she ultimately returned to the big screen with Adam McKay's satire "Don't Look Up" in 2021 (Lawrence and Maroney's son Cy, named for the artist Cy Twombly, was born after the release of the film). In 2022, Lawrence led the independent drama "Causeway" alongside Brian Tyree Henry, which features their characters bonding over unlikely shared traumas, and in 2023, she earned a Golden Globe nod for "No Hard Feelings." These days, Jennifer Lawrence is fully in charge of her career ... and that includes any nude scenes she performs.