by Nadia Cohen
And to add to her stresses, Jennifer found herself caught up in an unexpected legal wrangle when the makers of American Hustle were sued for $1 million (£630,000) over a 10-second quote from Jennifer about a microwave. In the film her character, Rosalyn Rosenfeld, sets the 1970s-style oven on fire by using tin foil and in the following rants claims the new-fangled gadget ‘takes all of the nutrition out of food’.
‘It’s not bullshit, I read it in an article by Paul Brodeur,’ she tells Irving, her husband (played by Christian Bale).
But Mr Brodeur, a real-life journalist who wrote about the possible radiation hazards of microwaves in the 1970s, said he never made that particular claim. He filed a lawsuit demanding $1 million in damages for defamation, saying the film attributes his name to a scientifically unsupportable statement about ‘taking nutrition out of food’, ABC News reported. The journalist also wanted Atlas Entertainment, Annapurna Productions and Columbia Pictures to remove his name from the film.
He believed a viewer could come away thinking he was incorrect and lacked knowledge about microwave radiation, thus damaging his career (the judge has since denied producers’ attempts to strike the lawsuit, meaning it will proceed).
American Hustle was loosely based on the FBI Abscam sting to catch corrupt politicians and businessmen. While Jennifer’s performance was widely praised following the film’s release in October 2013, it received mixed reviews. But thanks to it’s star-studded cast, the film proved a huge hit, raking in well over $250 million worldwide, as well as scores of prestigious awards including ten Oscar nominations. Whilst on the night the film did not actually win in any categories, it was a career step that pushed Jennifer into another level of public and media interest.
CHAPTER FIVE
KEEPING IT REAL
One of the things that make Jennifer so popular is the way she always seems to find time for her army of devoted fans, and rarely considers their requests for selfies and autographs too demanding. But she has also admitted that sometimes it is simply far easier to keep a low profile and travel incognito than attempt to deal with the crowds that engulf her everywhere she goes. ‘I have nightmares all the time that I’m walking through a mall and people start surrounding me and there’s nowhere I can go,’ she told the Daily Mirror. ‘So sometimes it’s easier to call one of my friends and ask them to pick up some bananas for me.’
She was warned that the attention would be intense when she agreed to play Katniss, but still finds it tough to cope with the demands of photographers and fans alike who surge around her every time she makes a public appearance. ‘The day the first Hunger Games came out was a kind of bizarre day for me because I wasn’t famous twenty-four hours earlier,’ she recalled. ‘I got up to go to the grocery store and all of a sudden there were, like, twenty-five paparazzi following me and there was a three-car pile-up.
‘I was really terrified and I went home and locked myself in the house. Then my doorbell rang and all of my friends were there with wine and vodka and the things I needed. They came in and we all just kind of watched TV and had a normal day, so that was nice. But it’s important to stay grounded, so I don’t know. I’m figuring it out. Or trying to.’
If it were up to her, Jennifer would avoid the limelight altogether, but she is sensible enough to understand that appearances on TV chat shows, premieres, award shows and even on advertising campaigns are actually a crucial part of her job, and her multi-million dollar contracts demand that she does a certain amount of promotion following the release of each new movie. Plus, she is often in line for a share of the profits, so it is in her best interests to ensure the films do well at the box office.
But Jennifer has found it hard to hide how much she loathes doing interviews, either on the red carpet or on television. ‘I always had a very clear idea of the type of course I wanted – acting, that’s all,’ she explained. ‘Of course, by contract I must assure a media presence to promote my work. But if I had a choice, you wouldn’t hear me express myself except in movies.’
She also revealed just how overwhelming she found the experience of sudden fame when she bumped into The Hunger Games (first movie) director Gary Ross at an event: ‘He was asking me what the experience was like,’ she told MTV News. ‘And I just kind of opened up and said, “I feel like a rag doll. I have hair and makeup people coming to my house every day and putting me in new, uncomfortable, weird dresses and expensive shoes, and I just shut down and raise my arms up for them to get the dress on and pout my lips when they need to put the lipstick on.”
‘And we both started laughing because that’s exactly what it’s like for Katniss in the Capitol. She was a girl who’s all of a sudden introduced to fame. I know what that feels like to have all this flurry around you and feel like, “Oh no, I don’t belong here.”’
According to her proud grandfather, Colin Koch, Jennifer is not at all keen on the barrage of attention she receives whenever she sets foot outside her front door either. ‘Jennifer doesn’t like the hype,’ he explained. ‘She looks like she really enjoys doing TV interviews but she’s just a great actress.’
He added that his granddaughter hasn’t let fame alter her fun personality: ‘She hasn’t changed one bit – she is so humble and down to earth.’
Francis Lawrence, who has directed Jennifer in three of the Hunger Games films, was equally amazed that his leading lady has managed to stay quite so grounded despite all the attention she gets: ‘She’s exactly the same girl I met when I signed on.
‘But the world has changed around her and become wilder and crazier.
‘I’ve seen it get harder for her to deal with and that’s sad to see. But she is really a special girl.’
However, Jennifer herself does feel a little different these days: ‘It’s difficult not to change when the whole world around me is changing.
‘The hard part of the job that comes with the territory is losing a lot of privacy and a lot of control over things that just out of human decency you should have control over.’
Unfortunately, as a result of the intensely personal nature of much of the media attention she has received since being in the public eye, Jennifer has lost a great deal of the trust she once had in people. She was particularly upset when she went to buy a French bulldog in October 2014, and according to E! News, although she got on well with the seller and they had friends in common, she was disgusted when she discovered that he had taken secret photos of her to sell on for profit later. ‘I didn’t realise he was taking pictures of me with his phone, which he later sold online,’ she explained. ‘I don’t want to have to question every person that comes into my life but at the same time I have reason to.
‘I don’t want to change but people need to stop being such assholes.’
Despite dealing with the occasional betrayal, Jennifer insists than underneath all the glitz and glamour, she is still just the same normal girl from Kentucky that she always was: ‘I have perspective because I didn’t grow up in this business,’ she told German magazine TV Movie. ‘I didn’t become successful until a few years ago and I’m very aware of what the real world is and how much a couch costs. I think about the same things as everyone else. Just the other day I bought Tupperware!
‘I just can’t understand why people suddenly go nervous when the elevator doors open and they see my face,’ she sighed. ‘Hey, it’s only me!’ (Although, of course, Jennifer herself has form for becoming massively overexcited when she meets her own acting heroes!)
Despite being a megastar who is paid millions for every movie, Jennifer still tries to live a modest life regardless of her huge bank balance. She loves a bargain and refuses to pay designer prices for anything, even though she could easily afford them.
‘It angers me when they put huge prices on furniture or clothing,’ she went on to say. ‘A shirt for $150? No thanks!
‘I do sometimes fly via private jet though, so no one knows where I am. I love my job and I know I’m lucky. But there are paparazzi everyw
here. That’s a horrible feeling. I’m not allowed to make any mistakes.
‘I realised that whatever I do, at any level, I would lose a part of my private life. For each “everyday” photo published, I generally spent three hours playing cat and mouse with photographers.’
She admits that the definite downside to the widespread acclaim, wealth, awards and attention she has received over the past few years has been the constant tailing and hounding by a pack of ruthless paparazzi photographers who camp outside her home or hotel, waiting for her to make a move.
‘I knew the paparazzi were going to be a reality in my life,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t know that I would feel anxiety every time I open my front door, or that being chased by ten men you don’t know, or being surrounded, feels invasive and makes me feel scared and gets my adrenaline going every day.’
In 2012 she said she wanted to leave Los Angeles because of the amount of unwanted press attention she was subjected to, and being chased every time she went out. ‘I cannot live in Los Angeles anymore,’ she told W magazine. ‘I don’t understand how actors can do it. You have no life here. You are followed everywhere. It’s not like that anywhere else in the world. I don’t want to stay in L.A. and start thinking that’s reality, because it’s very far from normal. But I still love movies.
‘I’m just going to love being in them from Kentucky, or Prague, or somewhere else,’ she added, although she has ended up buying a sprawling mansion and putting down roots in Los Angeles since then, as living in the area is essential for an actress of her stature.
And in another interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2013, she continued to mock those around her who take the movie business too seriously, saying: ‘I’m so aware of all the B.S. [bullshit] that surrounds Hollywood and how everyone gets on this high horse and thinks that they’re curing cancer, and it makes me so uncomfortable every time I see it.’
She also told Vanity Fair how ridiculous the movie business could appear from the outside: ‘Not to sound rude, but [acting] is stupid. Everybody’s like, “How can you remain with a level head?” And I’m like, “Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.”
‘I was like, “God, I’m going to be that person that everybody hates.” Cause it’s like, “Hey, here I am!” Like, all the time.’
Despite the constant scrutiny, Jennifer has not really changed from the down-to-earth country girl she always was and she still has a remarkable ability to take a step backwards and be objective about her highly unusual way of life.
When asked by Glamour magazine in 2012 how she deals with the fame, she admitted that it could sometimes feel somewhat overwhelming and strange: ‘I feel like I’m in the eye of the hurricane right now. I just recently started feeling like I’m insane, and I’m starting to think it’s my anxiety over the movie.
‘I think it’s a bit like, “I’m just cleaning the refrigerator handle. The movie’s not coming out. I’m going to clean it spotless, and then my life will not change.” It’s just scary.
‘I feel like I got a ticket to go to another planet and I’m moving there and there’s no turning back, and I don’t know if I’m going to like that other planet or have friends there. It’s daunting.’
In another interview with The New York Times she added: ‘It gets overwhelming, where I’ll cry in my car, but not to the point where I don’t want to do what I’m doing.’
Nevertherless, Jennifer is remarkably level-headed about the downsides of the business and does not expect any sympathy for her plight. Indeed she has said many times that she fully understands why people outside of the movie industry do not have a shred of compassion when superstars complain about their privacy being invaded. ‘You can say, “This is part of my job and this is going to be a reality of my life,”’ she said. ‘But what you don’t expect is how your body and how your emotions are going to react to it. Nobody wants to help us because it seems like, you know, “Shut up, millionaires!”’
Jennifer certainly does not expect any sympathy, because of the nature of her job. She once said to Entertainment Weekly: ‘When I meet somebody who actually does something to help other people, like a doctor, or even a financial advisor, that’s impressive to me.
‘“You can do math? That’s amazing!”’
But even though she knows it’s all part of the job, when, as recently as 2014, Jennifer found herself checking into a hotel and opening her window to find a ‘team of paparazzi’ shooting from the pavement directly up into her bedroom, she was horrified. Although she complained to the hotel management, she was told that the photographers could not be moved because technically they were standing on public property, and they were allowed to stay where they were.
She finds the legal loopholes that permit that level of intrusion so uncomfortable that she is determined to try and make changes to the system where she can, and plans to make it a sort of crusade: ‘If these laws are going to be in place to protect the press and to protect the paparazzi and to protect the news, then new measures need to be made, because this is an entirely new phenomenon.
‘This didn’t exist 200 years ago. And my belief, and it’s something I am going to work very hard on changing and I hope it changes before I die, is to make it illegal to buy, post or shop a photo that’s been obtained illegally.
‘I have photographers that jump my fence; if somebody jumps my fence and takes a picture through my window of me naked, that’s illegal, but the photos can still be everywhere the next day, and that makes no sense!’
As well as battling persistent photographers, Jennifer also has some very devoted fans who will follow her across the globe and wait for hours just to catch a glimpse of their idol.
Naturally, she feels the pressure of being watched around the clock, but deals with it in a typically matter-of-fact way, saying: ‘I have to live with it.
‘When I meet young fans I understand them because I was like that too, but it’s the real life day-to-day run-ins with people who don’t really know how to act that make me feel different. I don’t feel any different, but when the elevator doors open and everybody gasps, it’s an alienating feeling.
‘I love my job but there are difficulties that come with it. But it’s a very, very blessed life.’
Jennifer usually enjoys meeting her genuine fans, especially if she knows they have waited a long time for her to make an appearance. But she was forced to flee an autograph-signing session in New York City after fans pushing to the front knocked down a barricade in front of her. She had stopped to greet waiting crowds and sign autographs outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City following her appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in November 2014, but her time outside was suddenly and dramatically cut short after a barrier keeping the crowd contained fell down, prompting her team of security guards to grab the actress and bundle her away. Video footage posted online showed her running to the safety of a waiting car, her burly bodyguards by her side.
Luckily, the encounter didn’t put her off appearing on the show, and she returned a few months later, although she was feeling unwell, in January 2014. Jennifer told the audience that she was suffering from various gastrointestinal problems, and went on to complain that she was so cold, she was shivering and sweating. She said: ‘Do you ever get so cold that you start sweating? Is that just a gross problem that I have?’
Letterman answered: ‘I didn’t know it was possible for the human anatomy to behave that way,’ and called for an assistant to bring her a wrap. He then snuggled down with her beneath a large pink floral duvet. As he pulled it over their heads, he was heard to say: ‘Are they still there? I wish they’d go away.’
The interview hit the headlines after Jennifer unexpectedly admitted that she had soiled her underwear in front of her Hunger Games co-star Woody Harrelson. As she discussed suffering from severe stomach pain and admitted fearing
she had an ulcer, she blurted out: ‘There’s only so many times a day you can shit your pants before you have to go to the emergency room.’
With the talk-show host looking obviously horrified by her admission, she added: ‘It’s pretty clear when you first meet me that I’m a freaking head case and I’m crazy.’
But by this stage in her career, Jennifer was becoming well known for her embarrassing remarks and blunders. Not long after that she was presenting to former US President Bill Clinton and mistakenly called him Gill – she later admitted she had been reading from a prompter and believed she was doing a great job.
And in a televised interview with Conan O’Brien, Jennifer admitted that if she were not an actress she would be a hotel maid as she loves to clean and would go through everyone’s things: ‘I’m a big snoop,’ she confessed, adding that she takes pictures of fancy soap products in stores.
And when Conan asked if she worried that people would snoop on her when she stays in hotels, Jennifer revealed that as a joke a friend once bought her ‘a ton of butt plugs’. Although she put them under the bed at the hotel, when she returned the maid had found them and put them all on display in the room. ‘I wanted to leave the maid a note saying there weren’t mine,’ she laughed.
Jennifer has admitted that often she says too much during interviews because she is not afraid to express her true opinions.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live she stunned the audience by recounting an anecdote about her breasts, saying: ‘I just went to the doctor today. I got a chest X-ray of my lungs and discovered that my breasts are uneven. I was standing there with these doctors and they’re like, looking at my lungs, and it felt like an elephant in the room. And I was like, “Are my breasts uneven?” And they were just kind of stifled and uncomfortable, obviously. And so I kept thinking, “Well, I’m gonna dig myself out of this hole by bringing it up again.” So he was like, “Alright, well, our radiologist will get back to you about, you know, your lungs.” And I was like, “And my breasts.” And he was like, “Well, bye.”’
