Jennifer Lawrence said during a recent “Happy Sad Confused” podcast interview that she missed out on playing Sharon Tate opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” because her internet critics said she was not “pretty enough.” Margot Robbie landed the role.
“Happy Sad Confused” podcast host Josh Horowitz was reminiscing on how Tarantino once expressed interest in working with Lawrence and having her play Tate in the movie, to which the Oscar winner replied: “Well, he did, and then everybody was like, ‘She’s not pretty enough to play Sharon Tate.’
“I’m pretty sure it is true,” Lawrence continued (via Entertainment Weekly). “Or it’s that thing where I’ve been telling the story this way for so long that I believe it. No, but I’m pretty sure that happened. Or he just was never considering me for the part, and the internet just, like, went out of their way to call me ugly.”
Tarantino appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2021 and revealed he had “flirted” with the idea of Lawrence starring in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” only at the time he was interested in casting her as Manson girl Squeaky Fromme.
“I couldn’t be happier with what Dakota Fanning did — it’s one of the best performances in the movie. She’s amazing as Squeaky Fromme. She becomes her. But early on, I investigated the idea of Jennifer Lawrence playing Squeaky,” Tarantino admitted. “So she read it, and afterward we talked about it a little bit… something didn’t work out.. But she’s a very nice person, and I respect her as an actress.”
It turns out this was not the first time Tarantino had courted Lawrence, who also revealed on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that she turned down an offer to star in “The Hateful Eight” as the battered Daisy. The role was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.
“I turned it down,” Lawrence said. “I should not have done [that].”
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As for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” word about Lawrence and Robbie both being up for the role of Sharon Tate became widespread enough at the time that Tate’s sister, Debra, issued a statement to TMZ saying she was more in support of Robbie landing the role.
“They are both extremely accomplished actresses, but I would have to say my pick would be Margot,” Debra said at the time. “Simply because of her physical beauty and the way she carries herself — it’s similar to that of Sharon. I don’t think as much about Jennifer Lawrence — not that I have anything against her. She’s just, I don’t know, she’s not pretty enough to play Sharon. That’s a horrible thing to say, but I have my standards.”
Debra later spoke to Vanity Fair after the film opened and praised Robbie’s portrayal of Sharon, saying: “She made me cry because she sounded just like Sharon. The tone in her voice was completely Sharon, and it just touched me so much that big tears [started falling]. The front of my shirt was wet. I actually got to see my sister again… nearly 50 years later.”
Watch Lawrence’s full interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in the video below.
From Variety US