Jennifer Lawrence Has Some Blunt Thoughts About Academy Award Nominee Phantom Thread

phantom thread hated by jennifer lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence just so happens to be one of the most open and opinionated people in Hollywood, and she recently opened up about her feelings related to P.T. Anderson's Academy Award-nominated movie Phantom Thread. However, if you were expecting to hear some positives, this isn't the article for you. In fact, Jennifer Lawrence had so much trouble watching the film she said she shut it off quickly. Specifically, she told Marc Maron on WTF:

I got through about three minutes of it. I put in a good solid three. I'm sorry to anybody who loved that movie. I couldn't give that kind of time. It was three minutes and I was just [oof].

Three minutes is not a long time to really give a movie a shot, but Phantom Thread is a period movie, and it's a romance. Plus, it also overwhelmingly features a lot of close-up shots of clothing and insights into the clothing industry, which is not everyone's cup of tea, or clearly interesting to everyone. For some people, I can see how the deft and often weird movie might not be their cup of tea. While speaking with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, Jennifer Lawrence revealed she got three minutes in before she gave up. But hey, that's only about 1/20th of the time I gave mother! before doing the same thing.

While three minutes is not a long time to give a movie a chance, Jennifer Lawrence does go into detail about why she didn't like the movie enough to keep watching. The reason she bailed had to do both with subject matter and a general confusion over wtf (reference intended) the movie was supposed to be about. She also elaborated, noting,

Is it just about clothes? Is [Woodcock] kind of like a narcissistic sociopath and he's an artist so every girl falls in love him because he makes her feel bad about herself and that's the love story? I haven't seen it, so I don't know. I've been down that road, I know what what's like, I don't need to watch that movie.

It's probably not the best strategy to knock on a director's work if you want to ever work with that person, but Jennifer Lawrence is one of the biggest actresses in the business and can pretty well pick and choose her projects. If her comments are any indication, she wouldn't be particularly excited about working with P.T. Anderson, anyway. At least not in any film that had Daniel Day-Lewis repeatedly mulling over clothes.

In general, directors often take chances on movies, and aren't always positive about how they will be received, anyway. As for Phantom Thread, the movie has earned some awards nods, but it was always a bit of a niche movie anyway. So far the flick has made a little over $33 million worldwide, with $19 million of that coming in domestically. We'll have to wait and see how it fares following this weekend, as the Academy is set to announce the winners of this year's prestigious movie award this weekend. The Oscars air on Sunday, March 4 at 8 p.m ET. If Jennifer Lawrence is there or watching, we certainly know what she won't be rooting for.

Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.