Jennifer Lawrence Sparks Backlash By Falsely Claiming To Be The First Woman In The Lead Of An Action Movie

Jennifer Lawrence is facing backlash after falsely claiming to be the first woman to play the lead in an action film.

Lawrence made the remarks during a nearly 45-minute sit-down interview with Variety in which she and fellow actor and producer Viola Davis addressed acting, industry injustices, and parenthood, among other issues.

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Lawrence, 32, spoke about the significance of her role as "The Hunger Games" protagonist Katniss Everdeen: "I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead."

Lawrence went on to say, "It just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies."

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Critics jumped on Lawrence's comments on social media, mentioning that many other women have been featured as leads in action films, including Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" films, Angelina Jolie in "Salt" and "Tomb Raider," Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill: Volume 1" and "Kill Bill: Volume 2," and Michelle Yeoh in "Supercop," "Magnificent Warriors," and "Yes, Madam!"

Variety appeared to remove a tweet promoting Lawrence's remarks when several Twitter users pointed out her error.

Others pointed out that, while Lawrence's remark was technically inaccurate, it properly reflected a bigger issue of gender bias in Hollywood.

"It is untrue that no one had ever put a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games," On Twitter, Franklin Leonard, the producer and founder of The Black List, a forum for film and television writers, stated. "It is absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against women-driven action movies because of this ridiculous belief about who identifies with whom."

Davis and Lawrence play the lead roles in two recent films: "The Woman King," in which Davis plays the head of an all-female West African warrior squad, and "Causeway," in which Lawrence plays a U.S. soldier who returns home from Afghanistan after suffering a traumatic brain injury.

Charlie's Angels, starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu, and the Resident Evil series, directed by Milla Jovovich, was also addressed in the discussion.