Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Lawrence to film Lynsey Addario’s story

Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar-winning actress who stars as Katniss Everdeen in the “Hunger Games” films, will portray real-life photojournalist Lynsey Addario in a film based on her memoir “It’s What I Do.” Steven Spielberg will direct.

Deadline reports that Addario met with several players eager to snap up rights to her story: Reese Witherspoon/Working Title, Natalie Portman/Darren Aronofsky, actress Margot Robbie, and The Weinstein Company. In the end, the Spielberg/Lawrence combination won out.

Addario, who is not yet 40, has been embedded in Afghanistan, covered action in Iraq and the conflict in the Sudan, and documented the effects of using rape as a weapon of war in Africa. She was shooting the last days of Moammar Kaddafi’s reign in Libya when she and two other journalists were taken hostage.

“It is a diary of an empathetic young woman who makes understanding the wider world around her a professional calling,” Carol Williams writes in our review. Addario, who was born and raised in New Jersey, is now married and has a son.

Near the end of her book, Addario writes, “As a war correspondent and a mother, I’ve learned to live in two different realities.... I choose to live in peace and witness war — to experience the worst in people but to remember the beauty.”

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