Jennifer Lawrence Says She “Wanted to Kill” Harvey Weinstein After Finding Out About His Actions

Jennifer Lawrence and Harvey Weinstein have always been close. He helped her career take off around when she turned 20 after she received her first Oscar nomination for Winter’s Bone. She then starred in the Weinstein-produced Silver Linings Playbook which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Back in the fall after the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein came out, Lawrence said in an interview with Oprah that she’d known Weinstein since she was 20, saying, “He was paternal to me.” After all of the horrifying stories came into the light, she needed time before saying something publicly since she’d known him so well. “Just speaking for myself, I had known him since I was 20, and he had only ever been nice to me—except for the moments that he wasn’t, and then I called him an asshole, and we moved on,” Lawrence said. “So I needed a moment to process everything because I thought I knew this guy, and then he’s being accused of rape. We all knew he was a dog, we knew that he was a … tough guy, a brute, a tough guy to negotiate with.”

Now, in an interview with 60 Minutes, Lawrence has revisited the issue, discussing Weinstein again to express her disappointment and the unsettling feelings that accompanied it. She says he was “never inappropriate” with her, but his actions were “criminal and deplorable.” She proceeds to say in the interview, “When it came out and I heard about it, I wanted to kill him. The way he destroyed so many women’s lives. I want to see him in jail.”

These comments come just days before the theatrical release of Lawrence’s seductive new spy thriller, Red Sparrow. The film involves some nudity and for Lawrence that was something she’d sworn she’d never do after a hacker in 2014 leaked her private photos on the internet, leaving her traumatized. When asked what changed her mind, Lawrence specifically mentions that she loved the script and the only thing getting in her way was the nudity. She expanded on this by saying on 60 Minutes, “I realized there’s a difference between consent and not. And I showed up for the first day and I did it. And I felt empowered. I feel like something that was taken from me, I got back and I’m using in my art.” She credits this film and performance as helping her reclaim her body: “I did feel like I took the power out of having my body taken from me. I felt like I took it back and I could almost own it again.” She rejects the idea of audiences not seeing her nudity in the film in the same light in which she sees it, explaining, “It’s my body and it’s my art and it’s my choice.”

You can view the full 60 Minutes interview to hear about Lawrence’s rise in Hollywood and the tough choices she’s made as an actress here.