page_title: Jennifer Lawrence
section_title: 2006–2010: Career beginnings and breakthrough
hierarchical_section_title: Jennifer Lawrence / Career / 2006–2010: Career beginnings and breakthrough
caption_attribution_description: Jennifer Lawrence on the red carpet at the 83rd Academy Awards
context_page_description: Jennifer Shrader Lawrence is an American actress. The films she has acted in have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, and she was the world's highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016. Lawrence appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list in 2013 and in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2014 and 2016.
  During her childhood, Lawrence performed in church plays and school musicals. At age 14, she was spotted by a talent scout while vacationing in New York City with her family. Lawrence then moved to Los Angeles and began her acting career by playing guest roles in television shows. Her first major role came as a main cast member on the sitcom The Bill Engvall Show. Lawrence made her film debut in a supporting role in the drama Garden Party, and had her breakthrough playing a poverty-stricken teenager in the independent drama Winter's Bone. Her career progressed with her starring roles as the mutant Mystique in the X-Men film series and Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games film series. The latter established her as the highest-grossing action heroine of all time.
  Lawrence went on to earn accolades for her collaborations with director David O. Russell.
context_section_description: Lawrence began her acting career with a minor role in the unsold, unaired TV pilot Company Town (2006). She followed it with guest roles in several television shows, including Monk (2006) and Medium (2007). These parts led to her being cast as a series regular on the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show, in which she played Lauren, the rebellious teenage daughter of a family living in suburban Louisville, Colorado. The series premiered in 2007 and ran for three seasons. Tom Shales of The Washington Post considered her a scene stealer in her part, and David Hinckley of the New York Daily News wrote that she was successful in "deliver[ing] the perpetual exasperation of teenage girls". Lawrence won a Young Artist Award for Outstanding Young Performer in a TV Series for the role in 2009.
  Lawrence made her film debut in the 2008 drama film Garden Party, in which she played a troubled teenager named Tiff. She then appeared in director Guillermo Arriaga's feature film debut The Burning Plain (2008), a drama narrated in a hyperlink format. She was cast as the teenage daughter of Kim Basinger's character who discovers her mother's extramarital affair—a role she shared with Charlize Theron; both actresses portrayed the role at different stages of the character's life. Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe thought of Lawrence's performance as "a thankless task", but Derek Elley from Variety praised her as the production's prime asset, writing that she "plumbs fresher depths" into the film. Her performance earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Emerging Actress at the Venice Film Festival. Also that year, she appeared in the music video for the song "The Mess I Made" by Parachute. The following year, she starred in Lori Petty's drama The Poker House as the oldest of three sisters living with a drug-abusing mother. Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter thought that Lawrence "has a touching poise on camera that conveys the resilience of children", and her role in The Poker House won an Outstanding Performance award from the Los Angeles Film Festival.
  Lawrence's breakthrough role came in the small-scale drama Winter's Bone (2010), based on Daniel Woodrell's novel of the same name. In Debra Granik's independent feature, she portrayed Ree Dolly, a poverty-stricken teenager in the Ozark Mountains who cares for her mentally ill mother and younger siblings while searching for her missing father. Lawrence traveled to the Ozarks a week before filming began to live with the family on whom the story was based, and in preparation, she learned to fight, skin squirrels, and chop wood. David Denby of The New Yorker said the film "would be unimaginable with anyone less charismatic", and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that "her performance is more than acting, it's a gathering storm. Lawrence's eyes are a roadmap to what's tearing Ree apart." The production won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The actress was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance, and with her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, she became the second youngest person to be nominated in the category.
caption: Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011, where she received her first Best Actress nomination for Winter's Bone
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