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Women's Health

Jennifer Lawrence gets emotional when discussing postpartum depression

"Who am I as a mother?"

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Jennifer Lawrence speaks at San Diego Comic Con.

Part of why so many fans view actress Jennifer Lawrence as such a beloved talent is her ability to get real and very, very raw. She has never shied away from roles that begged her to strip down emotionally and bare everything. In one of her breakthrough roles in the film Winter's Bone, she plays a teenager who must fend for her family in the face of homelessness. In Silver Linings Playbook, she won a Best Actress Oscar for her daring role as a charming woman with mental health issues.

Language might not be suitable for a younger readers.

- YouTube, Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooperwww.youtube.com

She just seems to have a way of adding a bit of "charm-dust" to every part, whether it's action-driven, serious drama, or something in between. In her latest film, Die, My Love,(described as a comedy/horror) she plays a woman suffering from postpartum depression and psychosis as she watches her marriage dissolve. Based on the novel by Ariana Harwicz, this film adaptation is written and directed by Lynne Ramsay, who is known to push uncomfortable boundaries in her movies. The film, co-produced by Martin Scorsese, received a six minute standing ovation upon its premiere.

At Cannes, Jennifer gave an unexpectedly candid interview at a press conference. She admits she isn't usually an actress who "takes her work home," but in this case, as a mother with one on the way during filming, she knew all too well about mental health issues that often come with post-pregnancy. When discussing her character in the film, she shares, "Yes, a part of what she's going through is the hormonal imbalance that comes with postpartum. But she's also having an identity crisis."

Her eyes begin getting wet as she asks, "'Who am I as a mother? Who am I as a wife? Who am I as a sexual person to my husband? Who am I as a creative?"

She vulnerably adds, "And I think she's plagued with this feeling that she's disappearing. So for me, I was four and a half, five months pregnant when we shot. Great hormones, feeling great—which is really kind of the only way I was able to dip into this visceral emotion."

She adds a nod to her writer and director, saying, "Also, in terms of answering any question about my acting or performance at all, I have Lynne Ramsay as my director, so that's kind of it."

The comment section of the Deadline Instagram reel was bright with support for both the film and Jennifer herself. Comedian Chelsea Handler topped the section by writing, "Love everything Jen says and does." Another person wrote, "She's so real," with one more adding, "She just described every new mother."

One commenter notes, "She's a mom. She's gonna make it personal. I hope she stays true to her own motherhood."

To that point, in a different clip from the same press conference posted on YouTube by Page Six, Jennifer goes into detail about what having children feels like to her. "It changes everything. It's brutal and incredible. I didn't know I could feel so much, and my job has a lot to do with emotion. They've opened up the world to me. It's almost like feeling like a blister or something—so sensitive. So they've changed my life, obviously for the best, and they've changed me creatively."

Jennifer Lawrence in a press conference at Cannes Film Festivalwww.youtube.com, Page Six

In terms of how being a new mom affected her role, she says, "Obviously, as a mother, it was really kind of hard to kind of separate what 'I would do' as opposed to what she would do. And it was just heartbreaking. When I first read the book… I had just had my firstborn. And there's not anything like postpartum. It's extremely isolating… The truth is, extreme anxiety and extreme depression is isolating, no matter where you are. You feel like an alien, and it so deeply moved me."

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Emmy Rossum is demanding equal pay on 'Shameless.' And she really means equal.

In Showtime's "Shameless," Fiona is the feisty oldest daughter of the Gallagher family — the level-headed one, the one who seems to keep everyone else in check.

Judging by new reports about Emmy Rossum, the actress who brings Fiona to life each season, it appears reality is starting to mirror fiction.

Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images.

Before she commits to returning for the show's eighth season, Rossum is demanding equal pay for her role. And that's not all.

According to Variety, Rossum has already been offered the same pay as her male co-star, William H. Macy, who plays her dad in the show. But she's also seeking some retroactive equal-pay justice, so to speak.

As Variety reports (emphasis added):

"Rossum is demanding equal pay with Macy, after seven seasons of being paid less than him, according to a report published earlier today by the Hollywood Reporter. A source tells Variety she has in fact been offered equal pay. But she is holding out for a bigger salary than Macy to make up for the previous seasons where she was making significantly less than him."

While Rossum's demands may come across as excessive to some, they really ... aren't. Just look at her value to the show.

Rossum — whose critically acclaimed performance as Fiona has snagged two Critics' Choice Awards — plays such an integral role in the series that the network hasn't even considered the option of moving on without her. Rossum even directed episodes of the series this past season.

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for CDG.

While Macy was arguably the bigger star when the series began in 2011, "Shameless" wasn't Rossum's first big break — she'd already appeared in "Mystic River," starred in 2004's blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow" alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and garnered rave reviews for 2004's "Phantom of the Opera."

Rossum's request to be back-paid equally for her performance in earlier seasons would set a significant precedent in helping to close the gender pay gap in Hollywood.

A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence, Robin Wright, and Patricia Arquette have helped elevate the conversation in Hollywood — an extension of broader pay inequality that exists between men and women across virtually all industries, a gap that's even more stark when you're a person of color.

Viola Davis, currently starring in ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder," has spoken out about how women of color are further affected by systemic sexism in Tinseltown (again, reflecting an injustice felt far beyond Hollywood).

Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Variety.

Speaking to Mashable, Davis explained how she's personally affected by the issue (emphasis added):

"I believe in equal pay, first of all. I’m sorry, if a woman does the same job as a man, she should be paid the same amount of money. She just should. ... But at the same time, with me as an actress of color, I have to say to probably contradict myself, that’s not something I think about on a daily basis. Because the struggle for us as women of color is just to be seen the same as our white female counterparts."

Hollywood's certainly got its work cut out.

Closing Hollywood's pay gap may seem unimportant to everyday people, seeing as we're debating how many millions these celebs make. But it's not.

Dollar signs aside, any kind of inequality is indicative of a broader issue. If Hollywood's A-listers can help push this conversation forward, its ripple effect will affect all of us.

When Jennifer Lawrence spoke out last year on the discrimination she faced, for instance, it touched on a much bigger point, as Alicia Adamczyk noted in Time:

"If one of the biggest celebrities of the moment, of either sex, can’t pull down as much as her male co-stars for the same job," she asked, "what does it say about how we value any woman’s work?"

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Why telling the world (or just your coworkers) your salary can be a really good thing.

In the Sony hack in 2014, leaked emails publicly put a spotlight on the wage gap between male and female movie stars.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence had no idea that she was making less than her male co-stars in "American Hustle" until that information was leaked. She was, understandably, pretty ticked off.

Co-star Bradley Cooper was also upset. As a result, he said he would start revealing his salary information to female co-stars to help with their contract negotiations.

Cooper speaks to the crew of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan during a USO tour in 2009. Image via Chad J. McNeeley/U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons.

Bradley Cooper pledging to reveal his salary to colleagues wasn’t just unusual because he’s a big-time celeb — it was unusual because Americans, quite frankly, hate talking about their salaries.

In the absence of leaked emails, we often have no idea how much our peers are making.

Think about it: Do you know how much money your friends make? What about your coworkers? Your parents? Your dog? (OK, your dog probably isn't making anything.)

Why are we so hesitant to discuss how much money we make?

Sharing salary information can be nerve-wracking — and for good reason.

Unspoken societal rules make it uncomfortable to talk openly about the subject, and some companies even have explicit policies against employees discussing wage information. It’s illegal for federal contractors to prohibit employee disclosure of compensation, but many companies (especially those in the private sector) do their best to discourage the dialogue anyway.

According to a Marist Poll, over 70% of adults in the U.S. don’t think private companies should be required to publish employee salary information internally or externally. The same poll showed that 66% of people want to keep their own salary info private.

Clearly, the whole topic is incredibly taboo.

Even this piggy bank won’t tell you how much money it has. Image via iStock.

Plus, there’s the concern that salary discussions will lead to nothing but resentment among employees who find out they’re earning less — or awkward feelings among those earning the most.

The poll above states that 58% of Americans think making salaries public "would cause conflict between employees rather than increasing fairness of pay within the company." After all, who wants to admit to their own hardworking friend that they’re paid a different amount, especially if they're working same job?

Despite the taboo, salary transparency has huge potential to protect against unfair wage discrepancies.

Think about it this way: If you find out you’re making less than a coworker and decide to talk to management about it, your boss has a couple of options. Yes, they could give you a raise (yay!), but they could also simply explain why you’re making less and give you a clear idea of what you would need to do to earn a raise (also yay!).

As long as there are strong, valid reasons for the wage discrepancy, the company has nothing to fear. As NPR puts it, "[salary] transparency is a defense against the games that bad bosses can play." What kind of games might that be? Ones that involve basing salaries and bonuses on factors like an employee’s race or gender.

Even in 2016, men typically make more money than women do for the same work. Image via iStock.

We may never know exactly why Jennifer Lawrence made so much less than her male co-stars in "American Hustle," but it’s not outrageous to assume the gap had something to do with her gender. What would the stars' salaries have looked like if Sony had an obligation to disclose them before the film was made?

Being open about salaries can also help with negotiating, budgeting, and even employee satisfaction.

That’s right. A PayScale survey of 71,000 employees found that “one of the top predictors of employee sentiment is a company's ability to communicate clearly about pay.” Even among employees who know they’re underpaid, 82% still feel "satisfied with their work" if the employer is honest about the reasons for that smaller paycheck.

And for those who are underpaid, knowing what your coworkers are making is a great starting point for negotiating your own compensation up to a fair place.

Whatever your number is, you can choose to keep it a total secret or shout it from the rooftops — it’s your call.

But the more conversations we have about why we have certain money norms, the easier it is for us all to determine which ones make sense and which ones may be causing us to sell ourselves short. And the better off we'll all be — financially and otherwise.

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Robin Wright knows her character's worth on 'House of Cards.' So she made a gutsy move.

The "House of Cards" star wants you to know something about her paychecks.

Is Robin Wright slowly evolving into her bold, dauntless character from "House of Cards"?

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

Or has she always been at this level of badass?

I ask because Wright, in perfect Claire Underwood fashion, demanded to be treated fairly by the show's bigwigs ... or else.

At a media event at the Rockefeller Foundation on May 17, 2016, Wright got candid about her paychecks working alongside co-star Kevin Spacey on their Netflix series.

“I was like, 'I want to be paid the same as Kevin,'” Wright told the audience of activists and media, The Huffington Post reported. And she'd get paid the same or "go public" with the pay discrepancy, she explained.

After all, she did snag Best Actress in a TV Series at the Golden Globes in 2014 for her role in "House of Cards." Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.

Wright noted that she'd decided to seize the moment after seeing data suggesting her character was actually more popular than Spacey's among viewers. Armed with that knowledge, Wright went to executives with her bold proposition. They went for it.

"It was the perfect paradigm," Wright said. "There are very few films or TV shows where the male, the patriarch, and the matriarch are equal. And they are in 'House of Cards.'"

Pay inequality has been a hot-button issue in Hollywood lately.

On top of widespread discriminatory hiring practices that leave women out — an issue that prompted the ACLU to ask federal agencies to investigate — Hollywood has a nasty habit of paying its leading men far more than its leading ladies.

Last October, Jennifer Lawrence penned an essay expressing regret over failing to insist she be paid equally to her male co-stars in 2013's "American Hustle." Lawrence didn't want to come across as "difficult" or "spoiled," she wrote (which, unfortunately, is a valid concern among women, because #sexism). But still, the inequity didn't sit well with her.

Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.

Lawrence's essay helped push the conversation forward about Hollywood's inexcusably large gender pay gap, with other stars like Kerry Washington and Carey Mulligan speaking out on the matter, too.

But isn't it a little absurd for women making millions of dollars to be complaining about their paychecks?

Not at all. As Susan Sarandon noted this week at the Cannes Film Festival, "it's about respect — it’s not about the money.”And it's respect that needs to be felt at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, too.

Equal pay "has to start with regular pay," Sharon Stone told People last November. "Not just for movie stars, but regular pay for the regular woman in the regular job."

Pay inequity isn't exclusive to Hollywood. Women are undervalued in their work throughout most industries.

Pay discrimination based on gender is far too common in the U.S., with full-time women workers making just 79 cents for every $1 their male counterparts make, according to recent data from the Census Bureau. The pay gap gets even more alarming when you consider race and ethnicity, with Hispanic women earning just over half of what a man earns in the U.S.


Graphic via The White House.

Sure, blatant discrimination isn't solely to blame for the gap in its entirety — other important social factors, like access to education, play a role. Still, a sizable discrepancy remains, "even after comparing men and women with the same job title, at the same company, and with similar education and experience," Glassdoor's Andrew Chamberlain told Fast Company in April.

Women shouldn't have to be bold or deliver ultimatums to their bosses to get paid equally. They should be treated fairly as human beings just for doing their jobs. That's it.

But until we've reached that benchmark, we have women like Claire Under — er, Robin Wright to inspire us all to demand better.

Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Nantucket Film Festival.

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