Jennifer Lawrence opens up about her decision to drop out of school and pursue acting as a teen

Jennifer Lawrence never graduated high school nor does the Oscar winner have a GED.

The 32-year-old is busy promoting her new flick, Causeway, at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival and opened up about her ‘relationship with home,’ while speaking with Entertainment Weekly.

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Lawrence convinced her parents to allow her to drop out of school at 14 and pursue an acting career.

Lawrence explained that her new thriller, Causeway, immediately grabbed her because she could relate to the plot and the search for a sense of home.

‘I felt something in my gut when I read this, that immediate, ‘We have to make this’ [feeling]. I identify with that feeling of trying to find your home, to find where you have purpose,’ she revealed.

Adding: ‘I left home when I was 14. My relationship with home has always been complicated.’

In Causeway, Lawrence plays a U.S. soldier who returns home to New Orleans after suffering a traumatic brain injury while serving in Afghanistan, according to Variety. 

‘I left home when I was 14. My relationship with home has always been complicated,’ Lawrence said (Pictured in 2008 when she was 18)

She struggles to return to her daily life with her mother as she waits for her eventual redeployment. 

The Hunger Games star has previously been candid about struggling through school as a kid but feeling confident that she was born to act. 

After taking a short break from acting, Lawrence is back and even getting behind the camera to produce. 

The psychological drama Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry, is among the films making its world premiere this year at TIFF.

Connection: Lawrence explained that her new thriller, Causeway, immediately grabbed her because she could relate to the plot and the search for a sense of home 

The film is the first project from Lawrence’s production company Excellent Cadaver, and directed by Lila Neugebauer.

Neugebauer helmed the film from a script by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh that also stars Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jayne Houdyshell, Russell Harvard, Joshua Hull and Fred Weller, among others.

While the film focuses on acute post-traumatic stress, there’s also elements of childhood trauma weaved into the storyline.

‘Her untenable home, her inability to commit to one thing or another because of these internal injuries that are completely invisible but huge — I think I connected with that at that specific time in my life,’ the first-time mother revealed to Deadline. ‘So much was going on with me at that time that I didn’t realize. Until I was back, pregnant, married, making it [the film]. And I was just like, ‘Oh, this is a woman who is scared to commit.” 

Lawrence and husband Cooke Maroney are the proud parents of a boy Cy, whom she revealed is named after the late American painter, sculptor and photographer, Cy Twombly.

Causeway is scheduled to be released theatrically and on Apple TV+ on November .

The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday and runs through until Sunday, September 18.

Headliners: The psychological drama Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry, is among the films making its world premiere this year at TIFF ( L-R: Linda Emond, Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Lila Neugebauer and Justine Ciarrocchi)