After "Winter’s Bone" and an Oscar nomination at the age of 21, Jennifer Lawrence was well on her way to stardom. And the big roles followed, "The Hunger Games" and "X-Men: First Class," but a special kind of alchemy has been untapped with her ongoing collaboration with director David O. Russell. It’s won her a Best Actress Oscar already ("Silver Linings Playbook") and another nomination for "American Hustle" — it was supposed to be a small supporting role, but ended up stealing much of the movie. Their collaboration continues for their third film, "Joy."
READ MORE: The Films Of David O. Russell Ranked From Worst To Best
“It’s fascinating and terrifying working for him because he’s a mad scientist genius,” Lawrence told EW earlier this summer about working with Russell. “He’s inspired by anything. One time he wrote a scene by watching me get my hair done. He just went, ‘Oh! The sound of a shovel in the ground. Sinister!’ And then he ran out of the room.”
She’s basically a Russell vet at this point and has even given advice to other actors. “I always see the wide eyes of people who’ve never worked with him before. I tell them, ‘You have to let go of all your s—t. You are the paint. He’s the paintbrush and the canvas.” she said, “Everything moves so fast. It’s like watching someone do a giant abstract painting or sculpture and you go, ‘Where is this going?’ And then all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh, it’s a pegasus. It’s beautiful!’”
Their next potential masterpiece is "Joy," the story of a family across four generations and the woman who rises to become founder and matriarch of a powerful family business dynasty. It’s really the story of the women who invented the Miracle Mop, but it’s clearly more complex than just that. Here’s the official synopsis:
JOY is the wild story of a family across four generations centered on the girl who becomes the woman who founds a business dynasty and becomes a matriarch in her own right. Betrayal, treachery, the loss of innocence and the scars of love, pave the road in this intense emotional and human comedy about becoming a true boss of family and enterprise facing a world of unforgiving commerce. Allies become adversaries and adversaries become allies, both inside and outside the family, as Joy’s inner life and fierce imagination carry her through the storm she faces.
The movie also has a super cast that includes Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Elisabeth Röhm, and Bradley Cooper. No one’s yet seen the movie, but so anticipated is the next Russell/Lawrence collaboration, most Oscar pundits have considered it a major frontrunner sight unseen. "Joy" opens in theaters everywhere on December 25th. Watch the new trailer below.