‘Hunger Games” Jennifer Lawrence: ‘Catching Fire’ will get ‘real’

Running through a battle environment killing teens while a global audience watches in glee doesn’t (one hopes) have much in common with the world we live in. But Jennifer Lawrence -- who of course plays Katniss Everdeen in said environment’s “Hunger Games” -- thinks the film’s sequel will offer a certain verisimilitude.

“The new movie will be very real, which is what I’m excited about,” she told 24 Frames of “Catching Fire,” which Francis Lawrence will direct. “I really like his take, which is a lot of what I liked in Gary Ross,” she added. “It’s the realistic grasp of the story instead of all the details of the imaginary things.”

Lawrence said she’s met with the director and believes that, overall, he’s trying to continue what Ross started with his adaptation of the first book in the Suzanne Collins’ series. “He’s not trying to reinvent anything,” she said.

The actress begins shooting “Catching Fire” in the fall, with the movie set for a November 2013 release. In the meantime, the Oscar nominee will be seen as the object of other men’s affections.

She recently wrapped “Serena,” a romantic drama set in Depression-era North Carolina in which she plays Serena Pemberton, a not-exactly-sympathetic wife to a timber magnate (Bradley Cooper) as well as the object of another man’s (Rhys Ifans’) affections -- a man who it should be said gets violent when things don’t go his way. Lawrence described the plot as “kind of a messed-up love story.” Directed by Susanne Bier and produced by Mark Cuban’s 2929 Prods., the film does not yet have U.S. distribution.

Lawrence, who with her previous roles has mostly stayed in modern (or future) times, said she found the period setting an adjustment.

“If you’re wearing high heels, you feel more posh,’ she said. “It changes everything, even the way you move your body.”

But Lawrence also thought “Serena” a relief after the righteous heroines of “The Hunger Games” and breakout “Winter’s Bone.”

“It’s nice not to have to make excuses for your character, not to always try to rationalize something,” she said. “There’s something totally liberating about dancing around the room just clawing away.”

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