Jennifer Lawrence has opened an official Instagram account, ending more than a decade without a public presence on social media. The star of "The Hunger Games" now appears on the platform under the handle @jlaw.
In her bio, she joked that the username jenniferlawrence was already taken.
Although she has not published a single post, Lawrence gathered more than 670,000 followers within a few hours of the account appearing, while she herself follows 45 accounts.
Why she stayed off social media for years
The 36-year-old actress explained her reluctance to join social media in an interview with BBC Radio 1 in 2014. She said she was not very good with her phone or with technology, and that she could not really keep up with her own email, so the idea of Twitter was completely unthinkable to her. She added that she did not really understand what it was, describing it as a strange riddle that people talked about, though she said she respected it.
A change of heart by 2019
Lawrence's position appeared to soften over time. In an interview with InStyle in 2019, she admitted that she did in fact follow what was happening on social media, revealing that she kept a secret profile on TikTok. She said she would only want a public account if she considered it absolutely necessary.
She described herself in that interview as someone who watched but did not speak, an observer rather than a participant. She said there were always so many reactions, with so many people listening, paying attention and holding opinions about absolutely everything. She said she did not want to invite all of that unless it was truly necessary, and that she did not want to expose herself without a reason. She added that unless she was promoting something or something genuinely outraged her, people would not be hearing from her.
Who is Jennifer Lawrence
Lawrence rose to global fame playing Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games" film franchise and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in "Silver Linings Playbook." She has largely kept her public profile limited to press appearances and interviews rather than personal social media accounts, making her sudden arrival on Instagram, even without any posts yet, a notable shift after ten years of staying off the platform.
