Steve Pratt talks to Jennifer Lawrence about being a ‘hot property’ movie star and why she doesn’t want the experience to change who she it.

MEETING Jennifer Lawrence is a shock. If only her photoshoot for Esquire magazine had been published before the interview, I’d have been prepared for the attractive 19-year-old who greets me in the Edinburgh hotel room.

It should, I suppose, be no surprise that she looks nothing like she does on screen in Winter’s Bone. She is, after all, an actress whose job is to play other people and in the backwoods drama becomes Ree, a 17- year-old whose figure is hidden beneath winter clothing needed to survive the stark Missouri woodlands and whose face is bare of make-up.

Thankfully, her appearance is quite modest compared to the provocative swimsuit photoshoot that later appears in Esquire.

This is an actress who can clearly fulfil the obligations of being both Oscar-worthy movie star and a glossy lads’ mag pin-up while retaining her dignity and integrity.

She’s in the Scottish capital for the premiere of Winter’s Bone at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, the second feature from director Debra Granik, took the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance festival and has led to Lawrence, now 20, being tipped for an Oscar nomination. Some have gone further and predicted she’ll win. On top of that the New York Times has named her one of the 50 People To Watch.

She takes the Oscar buzz in her stride. She’d be a liar if she said she didn’t think about it, she says, but “it’s kind of like planning your wedding before your boyfriend has proposed to you”.

She has no game plan. “I think about movies the same way I think about music – I like it if it’s good,”

she says.

The Kentucky-born Lawrence’s career began when she was 14 and spotted by a modelling scout walking along a New York street.

Acting roles followed, including Kim Basinger’s daughter in The Burning Plain (for which she collected the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actress at Venice Film Festival) and the lead in Poker House (another win – outstanding performance prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival).

Lawrence appears wise beyond her years. “Every little girl dreams of being a movie star, but growing up in Kentucky it was never a reality.

Once I’d started doing it, I remember reading a script and understanding more than I’ve ever understood anything in my life.

“Once I started trying it and was good at it, I think it just came from a place of understanding. It’s the first thing I fully understood and couldn’t get enough of it.

“I’ve no idea where acting came from. I’m the black sheep of the family, the only one that is lefthanded and has curly hair, so it came out of nowhere.”

She’s what the industry would term hot property. She’s filmed The Beaver opposite Mel Gibson and directed by Jodie Foster. At present she’s playing shape-changing mutant Mystique in X-Men: First Class.

“I’m busy, I don’t know if I’m in demand,” she says.

The New York Times Top 50 honour is not something that impresses her. “My career will never sway me as a person because it’s simply my job and has nothing to do with who I am. I’m happy and honoured to be on those lists but it doesn’t change who I am.”

As I said, wise beyond her years.

Winter’s Bone sees her giving a confident, compelling performance as Ree, a girl trying to find her father who’s disappeared without trace and left her caring for a sick mother and two young siblings.

She went back home to Kentucky to prepare for playing Ree, learning to chop wood and shoot guns. The gunplay was “fun”, Lawrence says.

“I’d love to be able to a shoot a target. I feel powerful holding a gun, but when you shoot they’re so loud.

I’m not judgmental on them, I just think they’re really loud.”

Did she like her character? “Of course,” she replies. “I don’t think it’s necessary to love your character, there are some people who don’t like themselves. You don’t have to love every character you play. I just happen to love her – her strength and the fact that she didn’t take no for an answer.

“It’s great to dress up every day and be that strong. Every day between ‘action’ and ‘cut’ it was an honour to play her. I had a spa day as a break. And it took a while to recover because every time I finish filming I give myself just a few days of plain sleeping.”

She went on to make The Beaver, with Gibson as a man who becomes attached to an animal glove puppet.

As with Winter’s Bone she’s directed by another strong woman, Jodie Foster, who also appears as Gibson’s wife.

“She’s such a director and would be behind the monitor and the AD (assistant director) would be ‘Jodie, Jodie, we need you’ and she’d go “Shute” and go in front of the camera.

Perhaps that’s what’s given Lawrence “such an itch to direct”

although she admits, “I’m obviously not nearly ready but I definitely want to direct”. I predict she’ll get her way.

■ Winter’s Bone (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow