Katniss faces the Gamemakers during her private session.
Nina Jacobson recalls her first thoughts about casting the movie. “Once people knew a movie was going to come out, then
people got very opinionated about who should play the roles and obviously that’s a lot of pressure. But I think a book
adaptation doesn’t have to be just like the book, it has to feel like the book. That’s what you want. You want to get
the feeling from the movie that you got from the book, and you want the characters to evoke the characters that you fell
in love with. And so it was really a matter of looking for the essence of each character in each actor, knowing we can
manipulate hair color, we can manipulate a lot of things, but we can’t really change somebody’s essence.”
“It was definitely a different casting process than I’d ever been through before,” Gary Ross comments. “The fan base
feels incredibly connected to the story and everybody had a visceral sense of who should play these characters. People
are connected to the material — for them it’s personal.”
Veteran casting director Debra Zane cast a wide net for actors to play the main parts, but the production team also had
some intriguing ideas of their own. “The loudest, most influential voice in the casting was Gary’s,” says Alli
Shearmur of Lionsgate.
Producer Jon Kilik was working with Nina Jacobson and Gary Ross, and he was a part of many early conversations about
casting. “I had seen Winter’s Bone and I didn’t want to influence Gary,” he says. “But when Gary mentioned Jennifer
Lawrence, it literally sent shivers up my spine because I thought she was so perfect.”
“We all knew it was about Katniss first and once you found her, then you could find everybody else,” executive
producer Robin Bissell adds. “So Katniss was our focus. From the start we talked about Jennifer Lawrence, but we couldn
’t just say we’re only going to see one person. So we had a lot of people come in and read, but we were still thinking
about Jennifer on some level.”
Jennifer Lawrence as Ree in Winter’s Bone (2010).
Twenty-year-old actress Jennifer Lawrence had only one starring role to her credit, but it had earned her an Academy
Award? nomination for best actress. Her performance as Ree in Winter’s Bone had catapulted her out of obscurity,
startling audiences with its raw intensity. Lawrence was blonde and beautiful, a few years older than Katniss Everdeen
— she wasn’t an obvious match for the role. And yet she’d been completely believable as a destitute teenager living
in the Ozarks. Ross, Jacobson, Lionsgate, and Collins were eager to give her a chance.
Lawrence remembers reading The Hunger Games for the first time. “I read the books around Christmas [2010], and I went
through them all in a matter of days. I just thought they were amazing. I loved the futuristic Joan of Arc character of
Katniss. And it’s hard to say that something in the future is ‘true,’ but the book speaks truly about our time — it
’s incredibly relevant.”
At first she wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing the books in movie form. “I was skeptical because I loved the books
so much, but when I met with Gary Ross I realized within about thirty seconds that he was the only one who could make
the movie and make it in the right way.”
With great confidence in Ross’s team, Lawrence read for the highly coveted lead role of Katniss. From the moment she
walked into the room, her presence was magnetic. Nina Jacobson remembers, “There was instant power and intensity and
certainty in Jen’s performance. She came in with this great understanding of this character. This is actually a girl
whose fierceness comes from a nurturing place, not a conquering place. In her audition we used the scene in which she’s
saying good-bye to her mother and her sister and Gale. There’s a line in the scene in which she tells her mother, ‘Don
’t cry.’ And just in the way she tells her mom ‘Don’t cry,’ it’s kind of like ‘Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you
dare fall apart in this situation.’ In that one little moment, she spoke volumes about this character and her past and
her present and her future.”
Katniss runs through the arena.
Gary Ross adds, “I’ve worked with amazing actors. Someone like Jen comes by once in a generation. I mean, this is an
unbelievably rare thing. This is Michael Jordan, this is Baryshnikov, this talent is almost stunning to witness. There’
s nothing you can ask her to do that she can’t do.”
Lionsgate’s Joe Drake reminisces about the audition tape that landed Lawrence the unanimous support of the studio, and
ultimately the role: “We always factor in a certain degree of research and analysis when we make these major casting
decisions. But what ultimately led us to cast Jennifer in the role of Katniss wasn’t anything that could be calculated
— it was the visceral reaction of myself and the other decision makers at Lionsgate to her audition. Jennifer’s read
gave me chills, and it made me cry. At the end of the day, all of the best casting decisions are made based on raw
talent and gut reactions, and we are particularly proud of this one.”
Jennifer Lawrence was in London when she heard she’d landed the part and was overjoyed and overwhelmed: “I was
convinced I didn’t have it. And then I got the phone call while I was in London. I was then terrified. I knew this was
going to be huge, and that was scary. I called my mom. She said, ‘This is a script that you love, and you’re thinking
about not doing it because of the size of it?’ And I don’t want to not do something because I’m scared, so I said yes
to the part, and I’m so happy I did.”