Jennifer Lawrence on Die My Love and Why Releasing It Feels Violating

Jennifer Lawrence has survived press tours for everything from gigantic franchises (The Hunger Games) to Oscar-winning prestige plays (Silver Linings Playbook), but the demands of talking in-depth about her latest project, Lynne Ramsay’s brutal and elliptical drama Die My Love, have already proven uniquely challenging. 

The movie, adapted from Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name and following a new mother whose mental health starts deteriorating amid their isolated Montana surroundings, features one of Lawrence’s gutsiest, most visceral performances to date. In the year-plus since they shot the film, her relationship to the material has evolved, maintaining an intense immediacy. Having given birth to her first child in 2022, she was pregnant with her second during production, and struggled with postpartum depression while having to look over the film as a producer. “That was a ride,” the 35-year-old says.

The same might just go for the experience of sitting for interviews like this one. Lawrence admits to me that she’s found the process of promoting the film at length “very personal and weird,” given the depth of Die My Love’s themes. This also may be due to the extended press run: The movie premiered at Cannes back in May, where Mubi acquired rights for a whopping $24 million, and finally hits U.S. theaters this weekend. Then there’s the awards campaign that could extend into January — having earned some career-best notices, Lawrence is in the hunt for her fifth Oscar nomination, and first in a decade. 

So Die My Love remains a lot to process for Lawrence — and she’s game to talk about why. 

I wanted to ask you a little bit about Lynne as a creative partner for you. She’s somebody with such a singular, particular vision, and I feel like this is some of the rawest work I’ve seen you do in a film. 

You never really know what the experience is going to be like when it’s an auteur. I assumed that she would be very controlling, and she was really the opposite. She was very emotionally-led. A few weeks before shooting, we all went up to Calgary and we had really long discussions about our characters. Not really rehearsals — just conversations. Then she shows us around the house, and the house kind starts to feel like another character. She does so much world-building that by the time that you actually get there, she steps back a little bit and goes into more of an observational mode. But she’s also a cinematographer — she actually is a cinematographer, and her gift with composition, and she could just make every shot look like a [William] Eggleston. She has such a gift.

It looks so great. What’s something surprising about the way it was made? 

Well, we shot on this really rare film stock [Kodak 35mm ektachrome] that might not even be available anymore. We might’ve used the last of it. I mean, fact check that. (Laughs.) [Cinematographer] Seamus McGarvey would burn the glass gate that’s in front of the lens. And we shot a lot of day for night; the last time I shot day for night was Winter’s Bone. I think that you have more control over the grain and the texture when you do that.

How did Robert Pattinson, who plays your husband, surprise you while you were making the movie?

He didn’t really surprise me. I was delightfully relieved that he is exactly how I assumed he would be. He was very laid back, very sweet, funny. We could sit in silence together, which was very important to me. We could both scroll on our phones and not talk, which is really, really necessary in a co-star.

I would imagine, especially for a movie like this.

(Nods.) Shooting 15 hours a day — what are you going to talk about? 

My understanding, and there’s been some reporting on this as well, is that Lynne continued to edit the movie even after the Cannes premiere. Can you talk about that from your perspective, as both a producer and an actor? What were those conversations like?

Well, I’m a producer because I connected the material with the filmmaker and found financing. My only job once the filmmaker was in place and the financing was in place, was just to make sure that Lynne had all of the creative freedom that she needed. It was really just staying out of her way — and then also keeping everyone out of her way.

Were you surprised, or what were you aware of in terms of why she decided to continue to edit after the premiere?

I wasn’t surprised. I think a lot of directors would keep editing until you physically drag them out of the space, especially somebody like Lynne. So I wasn’t surprised. We had a really, really quick turnaround in order to get into Cannes. I mean, we shot this last October, so it was super quick. Even the fact that it was ready enough for Cannes is a huge testament to her. But no, I wasn’t surprised that she wanted a little bit more time.

How many times have you seen the movie?

Probably 10, maybe just under 10.

How has your relationship to watching yourself on camera evolved? You obviously have to do it a lot more, I would imagine.

I’m fine with it. I mean, I do all the things that you would imagine: I notice my pores, I notice when I’m retaining water. But it doesn’t get in the way of me watching it. I’ve been doing it long enough that I can be objective. And sometimes I want to watch playback. If there’s a note or something that’s taking me too many takes — if I’m not understanding what the director is trying to say — then I’ll just watch playback. That helps me.

You’ve said that when you first encountered the book, you weren’t in a dark place when you read it — and that if you were in a dark place, you might’ve been too afraid to make the movie. Can you say a little bit more about that?

I use what I do to heal from emotional scars all the time. There are pieces of my childhood in every character, or observations or opinions. There are pieces of you, and that’s also how I process emotion. It always is more helpful for me when something has already been digested than to actively live in it. If I was in a dark place that reflected [the movie] — that was similar — I think I would’ve just tried to avoid it. It would’ve been too painful to imagine it, or to even, God forbid, go to set and call up those emotions if I was fighting internally over that. Because I wasn’t in that place, then I could kind of look underneath it and go as deep and as far as I wanted to. I wasn’t trying to avoid the pain.

I didn’t really suffer from bad postpartum until my second [child], that I was pregnant with when I was shooting this movie. So the weirder part was actually watching this movie while actively suffering from postpartum depression. That was a ride.

Had you seen it before?

Yeah, I had seen it when I was nine months pregnant, and then I had to watch it a lot after I had the baby.

It had to have been such a mind trip to navigate this movie: making it at one stage of parenthood, and then having to watch it in later — you’re encountering it at all these different stages.

I know — it was really cool. I found out I was pregnant, so I knew I’d be shooting pregnant, but I definitely didn’t expect there to be so many different dimensions of it. I saw it so many different ways and walked away with so many different opinions or feelings about it.

However you’re comfortable sharing, how did it hit you when you watched it while you were struggling with postpartum depression?

I hadn’t experienced postpartum when I was shooting it, I knew a fact — that the number one cause of death in new moms is suicide — but I couldn’t imagine that she would do that because she loved her baby so much. I was like, I don’t know if the forest is maybe more of a cleansing, or maybe it’s more of a rebirth. I don’t know if it’s suicide. Then when I had postpartum, I was like, “Oh, it has nothing to do with how much you love your baby. In fact, it’s because of how much you love your baby, that you are aware of how imperfect you are next to this perfect thing. It’s kind of like, “I’m going to be the only thing that’s wrong with you.” So then I was like, “Oh, she kills herself.”

That’s a big revelation to have after you make the movie, right?

From when I was shooting it, everything had to be real to me. I don’t even think I was aware that that’s what I was doing, but LaKeith [Stanfield, who plays Karl, with whom Lawrence’s Grace has an affair], forest — real. Everything, it is very real to her. I didn’t even have that question when I was shooting it, whether or not something was real. It was after a few watches, but I was like, “Oh, maybe that stuff is not real. Like a figment of her imagination.”

Over the last few months as you’ve been promoting the film, taking it around, what has it been like listening to Lynne and Rob talking about their experience making Die My Love? Has that also shaped the way you think about it?

That’s always interesting about movies — you make different movies. There’s one movie, then there’s the movie that you shoot, and then there’s the movie that you get in post, and then there’s your experience watching it — and then talking about it. It’s been such a weird experience. It feels so private and personal, the movie, that it feels so violating that everybody’s going to watch it and discuss it eventually. But I don’t know. I always hear something new from Lynne and feel like I could listen to her talk about it all day.

So how do you find a period like this then? When you get an early premiere, you have this very long gap between when the movie comes out and, I suppose, when you can truly leave it behind.

I told you, it’s very violating! (Laughs.) It’s insane to me that this is just a normal part of the process. It feels like your whole diary is about to just be ripped apart by everybody. It feels very personal and weird. But I’m super grateful, I can’t wait for people to see it.

I’ve interviewed some actors who’ve shifted to producing, and reading reviews tends to become more of a thing. Do you read more reviews now of a project like this? Did you ever read them before?

No. People on my team will make me aware of things when I need to be aware of them. But it’s not like I’m going to read anything. I genuinely wouldn’t really know how to find it. I don’t know how to look on Twitter.

You’d have to go on Rotten Tomatoes, I guess, which you probably don’t want to do,

Which I don’t want to do. I try to just be aware of what I need to be aware of. But I don’t think the postmortem is going to actually help. 

I’ve listened to you over the years talking about how you absorb some of your co-stars’ methods, like Christian Bale or Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m curious what you observed and maybe gained from working with someone like Sissy Spacek, who plays your mother-in-law, Pam. I know you connected to her role when you’d read the book, and she’s had such an incredible career.

She’s incredibly present, and I don’t know if it’s on purpose — if this is a part of her process — but she embodied Pam, so it wasn’t a huge jump from action to off camera. That could just be that she brought so much of her own warmth and intelligence and maternal energy into Pam, but there was this perfect blend between the two of them that made the move from not shooting to shooting totally seamless.

I’ve known Sissy for a really long time. I had a general meeting with her when I was a teenager, and I had worked with her husband [Jack Fisk], who’s the most brilliant production designer in the world. He was David Lynch’s guy! So I’ve known her for a really long time, and she’s always been really just sweet and maternal towards me. The added element being that I was pregnant, and she was just being so protective and loving — all of that made its way into it because, in the script, we’re really more of just a classic mother-and-daughter-in-law relationship.

As someone who is developing and producing material right now, what gives you hope for the industry as it goes through some tough times?

I think that true artists cannot be replaced. They just can’t. It really does not worry me. 

And what makes you most nervous?

Climate change.

Oh, for the film industry? I mean, me too, but — 

Oh. (Laughs.) What makes me nervous about the industry? The theater aspect makes me nervous because we’re always going to flock to whatever is easiest. Streaming is of course really easy. I love to stream a movie too, but that experience cannot be replaced — of everybody going and having this shared experience. Seeing One Battle After Another in theaters with everybody and everyone gasping and laughing — that feeling when you’re walking out, it’s like this connection. It also forces you to be present because when you’re streaming something, it’s really easy to look at your phone. You can’t do that when you’re at the movies. So I do worry about us getting too spoiled to go.

When this movie was at Cannes and there was so much excitement around it, was finding a strong, extended theatrical deal important to you in terms of who would buy the movie?

Yeah. We really wanted to have a good theatrical release. We wanted it to have a moment, or at least an opportunity, for people to see it in 70mm. Mubi have been really, really great partners, really adaptable and smart.

Would you ever do another franchise film, or do you feel like you’ve moved on from that world?

I love doing franchises because it’s rare in movies that you work with the same group of people for years. That element is great. I don’t want to say I never would — but I have two young kids, so I can’t imagine doing it now. I just need more freedom in my schedule. But not never.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Die My Love hits theaters this Friday.