The actress gets personal on motherhood and politics in a new cover story for 'Vogue.'
Jennifer Lawrence is opening up about her biggest role yet: motherhood.
In a new interview for Vogue's October cover story, Lawrence -- who has been largely private about her personal life -- confirms that the child she welcomed in spring of 2022 is, in fact, a boy and that his name is Cy. The short-but-sweet moniker comes from the postwar American painter Cy Twombly, a favorite of her art gallerist husband, Cooke Maroney.
"It’s so scary to talk about motherhood. Only because it’s so different for everybody. If I say, It was amazing from the start, some people will think, It wasn’t amazing for me at first, and feel bad. Fortunately I have so many girlfriends who were honest. Who were like, It’s scary. You might not connect right away. You might not fall in love right away. So I felt so prepared to be forgiving," she says. "I remember walking with one of my best friends at, like, nine months, and being like, Everyone keeps saying that I will love my baby more than my cat. But that’s not true. Maybe I’ll love him as much as my cat?"
Lawrence continues, "The morning after I gave birth, I felt like my whole life had started over. Like, Now is day one of my life. I just stared. I was just so in love. I also fell in love with all babies everywhere. Newborns are just so amazing. They’re these pink, swollen, fragile little survivors. Now I love all babies. Now I hear a baby crying in a restaurant and I’m like, Awwww, preciousssss."
Lawrence is currently promoting her new film, Causeway. It's the first feature to be released under her Excellent Cadaver production company, in which she stars as an American soldier who returns to her hometown of New Orleans after a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan. Brian Tyree Henry also stars.
The new interview dives deep into Lawrence's political views and complex personal relationship with her family in Kentucky, with the actress acknowledging that she experienced something of a rift between them following the 2016 election. "I just worked so hard in the last five years to forgive my dad and my family and try to understand: It’s different. The information they are getting is different. Their life is different."
Now, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade -- which made news during the time that Lawrence's Vogue interview was being conducted -- prompted her to make an extremely personal revelation about her own experience with pregnancy loss.
Lawrence says that she became pregnant in her early 20s and fully intended to have an abortion. Before she was able to, she says, "I had a miscarriage alone in Montreal." Years later, while married and in the midst of filming the Netflix movie Don't Look Up, she says she became pregnant and miscarried again. The second time, she required a D&C -- which is a surgical procedure to remove tissue from the uterus. Having access to such medical intervention restricted for many people, she says, is a topic that haunted her during her pregnancy with Cy.
"I remember a million times thinking about it while I was pregnant. Thinking about the things that were happening to my body. And I had a great pregnancy. I had a very fortunate pregnancy," she begins. "But every single second of my life was different. And it would occur to me sometimes: What if I was forced to do this?"
Beyond women's rights issues, Lawrence is also plagued with worry over gun control.
"I'm raising a little boy who is going to go to school one day. Guns are the number-one cause of death for children in the United States. And people are still voting for politicians who receive money from the NRA. It blows my mind," she says. "I mean if Sandy Hook didn’t change anything? We as a nation just went, OK! We are allowing our children to lay down their lives for our right to a second amendment that was written over 200 years ago."
Motherhood has changed Lawrence's perspective in a myriad of ways, including the way she relates to her Causeway character. Notably, the film began production prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and was forced to shut down. By the time filming resumed in late 2021, Lawrence had gotten married and was expecting her first child.
"Her untenable home, her inability to commit to one thing or another because of these internal injuries that are completely invisible but huge -- I think I connected with that at that specific time in my life," she says of the dramatic role. "So much was going on with me at that time that I didn’t realize. Until I was back, pregnant, married, making it. And I was just like, Oh, this is a woman who is scared to commit."
In her own life, Lawrence jokingly calls Cy her little voodoo doll because, the author notes, everything that hurts him, hurts her.
"I mean the euphoria of Cy is just -- Jesus, it’s impossible," Lawrence gushes. "I always tell him, I love you so much it’s impossible."
She adds, "My heart has stretched to a capacity that I didn’t know about. I include my husband in that. And then they’re both just, like, out there -- walking around, crossing streets. He’s gonna drive one day. He’s gonna be a stupid teenager and be behind the wheel of a car. And I’m just gonna be like, Good night! You know? Like, who sleeps?"
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