Actor Jennifer Lawrence has said that she had dropped out of school when she was 14 to pursue acting.
In an interview with 60 Minutes Bill Whitaker, a sneak peak of which was released recently, the Hunger Games actor said she was not a “very smart” student during her school days and never fit in back home in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I struggled through school. I never felt very smart. And when I’m reading this script, and I feel like I know exactly what it would look like if somebody felt that way. That was a whole part of my brain that I didn’t even know existed – something that I could be confident in, and I didn’t want to let it go,” Lawrence said.
“I dropped out of middle school. I don’t technically have a GED or a diploma. I am self-educated,” Lawrence said.
The 27-year-old actor next plays a Russian intelligence officer who makes heartbreaking sacrifices at a young age in the new spy thriller Red Sparrow.
Asked whether she regrets her decision, Lawrence said, “No. I really don’t. I wanted to forge my own path. I found what I wanted to do and I didn’t want anything getting in the way of it. Even friends, for many years, were not as important to me as my career.