Hunger Games director says fame hasn't changed Jennifer Lawrence

On the eve of the opening of the highly anticipated finale to the Hunger Games series, director Francis Lawrence sat down with CBC Montreal's Jeanette Kelly to dish on the film's brightest star and its message in a tumultuous world.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, who teams up with her closest friends, including Peeta, Gale, and Finnick for the ultimate mission: to assassinate President Snow and liberate the citizens of war-torn Panem.

Director Francis Lawrence, who directed three of the four movies in the series, was in Montreal as a surprise guest at a screening this week. 

• 3 new movie reviews in brief: Mockingjay Part 2, Brooklyn, The Night Before
• 12 best original songs from the Hunger Games soundtracks

Here are three revelations he shared: 

1. Jennifer Lawrence is the same genuine actress she was when the series started

I think in her heart and soul, she's the same girl. Her working process is the same. She's still very genuine and down to earth and fun to be around. Funny and smart and extremely talented.

I think the biggest changes have just been seeing how she's had to learn to navigate the new world around her. I mean, she's kind of stayed the same and the world around her has changed or the perception of her has changed. And I think that's been a little tricky but she's handled it very well.

She's fantastic to direct. She's probably one of the easiest actors I've ever worked with. You know she's a very instinctual actress. She doesn't like to rehearse. She doesn't actually like to talk about things a lot. Typically we'll meet for a few hours before the shooting even starts just to walk through the scenes and I'll tell her what I think the emotional journey is and we'll have discussions. And then it's usually that conversation that we'll go back to when we're in a specific scene.

But she's such a feeling and instinctual person that when you start rolling the cameras and she's in scene, when she's with great actors, she's always surprising.

2. Lawrence can really work that bow

She's a great archer. She's a great shot. She knows how to handle the bow. She doesn't have to fake that at all.

Before the first film, she trained with an Olympian and really learned how to shoot properly and she can even do a double shot so you basically take two arrows and string them at the same time and shoot them simultaneously. So she's good.

3. The brutality in the film and books is a reflection of reality

I think the unfortunate thing is that these themes are timeless.

She [Suzanne Collins] is basing these stories on Roman history so there's a lot of nods to Roman history and, unfortunately, I think since beginning of humankind people have been at war and people have been violent with each other.

So I think that's why these themes resonate. I think that's why when we're shooting, you see kids in Thailand protesting using the three-finger salute from the movie and you see slogans from our film in Ferguson in America and you see themes in these stories reflected in the news all around us, whether it's Paris or it's Beirut or it's in the streets of the United States.

It's part of the world and it's a really unfortunate thing.