Jennifer Lawrence Opens Up About Social Anxiety

When one thinks of Jennifer Lawrence, the first thing that naturally comes to mind is her bubbly personality. Lawrence spent the better half of the beginning of the year charming Oscar voters and generally everyone else during the press tour for Silver Linings Playbook, but now, as she promotes the action film Hunger Games: Catching Fire, she reveals that she’s not as perfect as one might think.

For the first time Jennifer Lawrence opened up about her social anxiety that she struggled with throughout her childhood. The natural extrovert suffered through social anxiety once she entered school, and it reportedly concerned Lawrence’s parents that they took her to see a professional therapist for help.

In an interview with French magazine Madame Figaro, Lawrence opened up about her struggle having said:

“I was hyperactive, curious about everything. When my mother told me about my childhood, she always told me there was like a light in me, a spark that inspired me constantly. When I entered school, the light went out. We never knew what it was, a kind of social anxiety. But I had friends.”

Lawrence said that her social anxiety wasn’t very easy to fix, and spoke about her experience with seeking help in conventional ways:

“I went to see a shrink. Nothing worked.”

So what was the cure for Jennifer Lawrence’s social anxiety? Acting of course. Lawrence got bit by the acting bug and everything changed for Jennifer:

“I finally found a way [to] open the door to a universe that I understood, that was good for me and made me happy, because I felt capable, whereas before I felt worthless.”

Her last film Silver Linings Playbook dealt with a spectrum of disorders from OCD to Bipolar disorder. In the film Lawrence plays an off the rails widow named Tiffany, who yearned to be loved after the death of her husband.

In the end the role paid off for Jennifer Lawrence as it scored her an Oscar for Best Actress.

[Image Credit: Featureflash / Shutterstock.com]