Jennifer Lawrence Thinks Male Directors Can Be ‘Controlling' Over Actors

Jennifer Lawrence has worked with multiple directors - and she's noticed a difference when working with women vs. when she's worked with men.

"I have found a commonality in female directors, which is that they do not do this thing, which is over-direct," the actress, 35, said to Vulture in a Q&A following a screening of her new movie, Die My Love, on Thursday, November 7. "There have been some times when I've worked with male directors where there's this need to constantly feel like they're directing the movie."

Lawrence continued, "And it's not even really getting anything done. It's just annoying. When I think auteur, my mind kind of goes to controlling and … what's that word? Neurotic!"

An example Lawrence provided was her recent experience with Lynne Ramsay on Die My Love.

"And Lynne was the opposite," she explained. "She really built this world and made sure that we were all on the same page, through music and conversations and the atmosphere and the set. And then she would just kind of slowly walk back."

Lawrence added that when Ramsay let the actors try things on their own she could find the positives in the result.

"Sometimes, from the discomfort of that, from the lack of her visibility, something interesting would come from it," Lawrence reflected. "And then she would come out and be like, ‘That's great, great, yeah, do it again.' Or we would accidentally laugh and be like, ‘Oh, sorry.' And she'd be like, ‘No, it was great. I liked that you laughed. Do it again.'"

Lawrence stars in Die My Love alongside Robert Pattinson. The film is based on Ariana Harwicz's 2012 novel of the same name, which tells the story of a woman named Grace (Lawrence) and her husband, Jackson (Pattinson), who move from New York City to rural Montana. After welcoming their first child, the couple struggles to acclimate to their new lives as parents.

Lawrence shared that she and Pattinson opted not to use an intimacy coordinator while filming their sex scenes.

"We did not have [an intimacy coordinator], or maybe we did but we didn't really," Lawrence told cohosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers during the Wednesday, November 5, episode of the "Las Culturistas" podcast. "I felt really safe with Rob. He is not pervy and very in love with [his partner] Suki Waterhouse."

At the time of filming, Lawrence was pregnant with her second child, whom she welcomed with husband Cooke Maroney earlier this year. (The pair are also parents to 3-year-old son Cy.)

Earlier this month, Lawrence opened up about the struggles she's faced with balancing her career and motherhood.

"Having kids is sacrificial. It's gratifying and it's amazing and rewarding, but it's not not sacrificial," the actress said in the Times' "The Interview" podcast. "I'd never had to say no to something before that I really wanted to do."

Lawrence also admitted that she suffered from postpartum depression.

"I felt like a tiger was chasing me every day," she said, adding, "I had nonstop intrusive thoughts that I was at the whim of. They controlled me."

Copyright 2025 Us Weekly. All rights reserved

This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 5:21 PM.