Some of the best Jennifer Lawrence movies earned her Oscar buzz, but she's perhaps best known for starring in the book to screen adaptation of The Hunger Games. She played Katniss Everdeen for four movies, helping her become a household name in the process. She had some learning experiences along the way, including when she accidentally took an ambien before filming a scene with late actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Catching Fire. She recently explained the story behind that snafu, which included her "hallucinating" while shooting one particular sequence in the sequel.
When ranking the Hunger Games movies, usually Catching Fire is high up thanks to the way it expanded the world of Panem. In a conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio for Variety and CNN's Actors on Actors series, Lawrence spoke about one particularly challenging day filming after making a mistake with her medication. As she told Leo:
I also once took an Ambien in the morning, thinking it was something else.
Yikes. Ambien is a powerful drug that's used to help put people asleep, and it can cause some very strange behavior if the user is trying to stay awake while the medication is in affect. So accidentally taking one while at the top of the call sheet in a major movie franchise is pretty much the thing of nightmares. Indeed, J Law had a challenging day of filming as a result. She shared the specific scene that was being filmed during that fateful day, saying:
It was a dance scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman on the second Hunger Games movie. And I was hallucinating.
Hoffman was a legendary performer, so this certainly sounds less than ideal. On top of having to shoot dialogue at President Snow's party in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, she also had to dance with the late actor as well as Peeta himself Josh Hutcherson. In her conversation with DiCaprio he was shocked, thanks to how altered one typically is on Ambien. She confirmed that it was a huge challenge, confirming:
Well, certainly the memorization part of your brain.
While Catching Fire would release the same year Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for Silver Lining's Playbook, she was still having some big learning moments. That includes what happened when she accidentally took a sleeping pill in the morning rather than at night.
Later in her chat with Leonardo DiCaprio, the star of the X-Men movies revealed that her inability to memorize and understand the scene in Catching Fire led to some tension on the set. Particularly with Effie Trinket actress Elizabeth Banks. As she put it;
Elizabeth Banks got really annoyed with me. Maybe she didn’t know that I was on an Ambien. And I kept asking the director, ‘Wait, what does this mean? Wait, and what does this mean? And what does that mean?’ And she just threw her sides and was like ‘Fine! Let’s just keep talking about it.’
Oops. Lawrence and Banks would go on to film two more Hunger Games movies together, so it doesn't seem like this soured their relationship. But this particular day on set was a challenging one, and it was during a massive sequence with extras and much of the starring cast including Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland, and Elizabeth Banks.
Upon re-watching this scene Lawrence doe seem low energy, but you wouldn't know that she was struggling so hard while filming. I have to assume this was a big learning experience and she is careful about labeling her medications nowadays.
Jennifer Lawrence's latest movie Die My Love is in theaters now as part of the 2025 movie release list. And luckily for Hunger Games fans she'll reprise her role as Katniss in Sunrise on the Reaping on November 20th.
