Jennifer Lawrence is a woman of many talents and one of the most popular actresses today. Does this star speak Russian, like one of the characters she played?
Jennifer Lawrence does not speak Russian, but she did learn to speak with a Russian accent in preparing to star in the 2018 spy thriller film Red Sparrow, in which she plays a Russian citizen turned intelligence officer.
Read more below to find out about Lawrence’s Russian accent and where the curiosity about Lawrence speaking Russian may have come from.
Dominika Egorova
Jennifer Lawrence played Dominika Egorova in the film adaptation of Red Sparrow, a spy novel by a former CIA operative, Jason Matthews. Since her character is Russian and speaks with a Russian accent throughout the film, Lawrence had to develop a Russian accent to use for the role.
The character may be the reason many fans began to wonder if Lawrence herself spoke Russian, as she was taking on a Russian character. Lawrence doesn’t speak Russian in the film, as it was always going to be in English, according to the movie’s director, Francis Lawrence.
The accent was just part of her training for the role, which also included four months of intensive ballet courses and learning fighting moves for the combat scenes. The Russian accent development, in comparison, was “very boring” according to Lawrence, who spoke on the subject with the New York Times reporter Scott Shane, who added, “It’s easier to do that than learn Russian.”
Lawrence also talked about how she struggled to keep her Russian accent on set in an interview with Britain’s Total Film magazine. “I tried to stay in the accent, but it’s so hard because I’ve known the crew for so long, so I can’t talk to them in a Russian accent.”
“Next time I do a movie doing an accent, I’m never going to go in and out [of accents] because it makes it so much harder,” she explained. Lawrence was also one of the harshest critics of her Russian accent in the film.
“[W]atch me get annihilated for it,” she joked while talking about the accent. Dominika is the first character she’s ever played to have an accent throughout the film, and with the added challenge of switching between her normal accent and Russian accent on set, it was difficult to maintain.
Her fans were undecided on her accent, shown it in Twitter posts like this one which has some fans criticizing her accent and others defending it. In other cases, negative opinions of the accent didn’t change how they thought about the actress, like in this post which jokes about how her Russian accent “sucks” before adding, “still love her tho.”
Check out the YouTube video below to watch the trailer for Red Sparrow and to hear snippets of Jennifer Lawrence’s Russian accent.
Writing in Russian
Lawrence went on GQ’s “Actually Me” celebrity series, in which stars sign up for several websites and answer questions from fans all over the world. The series allows fans to get to know celebrities better, and lets celebrities correct false rumors that have been spread about them in the media.
In answering questions on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Quora, YouTube, and more, she came across the question, “Does Jennifer Lawrence [the one from the Hunger Games] speak Russian?”
“No. I don’t do that,” the actress said in English, but the answer she submitted on the site was “Нет. Я этого не делаю,” which is “No. I don’t do that,” written in Russian.
It was revealed that the question had to be translated from Russian for her to read it, and it’s unclear whether Lawrence was the one to write in Russian or if someone else did that as well. In any case, while she does not speak or read Russian, she may write in it.