Jennifer Lawrence clarifies her comments on female-led action films following criticism

Actress Jennifer Lawrence Thursday sought to clarify a controversial comment she made earlier this week regarding female-led action movies.

In a video interview published Wednesday in Variety, Lawrence told fellow actress Viola Davis that “I remember when I was doing ‘Hunger Games,’ nobody ever put a woman in charge of an action movie, because it wouldn’t work, we were told. Girls and boys can identify with a male role, but boys cannot identify with a female role.

After the comment drew criticism online, Lawrence told The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday that she didn’t mean she was the “only woman who has ever helmed an action movie,” but rather to “emphasize to how good it is.”

Lawrence said she wanted to bust “old myths” that have plagued the film and television industry, particularly regarding gender bias in Hollywood.

“But it was my blunder and it went wrong,” Lawrence told THR. “I had nerves talking to a living legend.”

Franklin Leonard, founder of The Black List, Hollywood’s annual survey of the most popular screenplays, called Lawrence’s comments “wrong”, but also noted a “genuine prejudice against female-led action films”.

“Wrong that no one has ever put a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games,” Leonard tweeted. “It’s absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against female-led action movies because of this ridiculous belief about who identifies with whom.”

The nearly 45-minute interview with Davis focused on motherhood, inequality in Hollywood and their respective film projects.