Jennifer Lawrence Discusses Post-Partum and How Having Children Is 'Brutal and Incredible'

On Sunday morning, Jennifer Lawrence attended a Cannes press conference for her newest film, Die, My Love, in which she stars across from Robert Pattinson. While discussing the Lynne Ramsay-directed movie, Lawrence shared a bit about her experiences as a new mother and how they informed her performance. The actress has two kids with her husband, Cooke Maroney.

In Die, My Love, Lawrence plays a young mother named Grace who is struggling with mental health issues after welcoming her child. Her struggles become an issue in her marriage to Jackson, played by Pattinson. The couple is completely isolated in their rural home in California, exacerbating their problems.

During the press conference, Lawrence shared she was already five months pregnant with her second child when she was filming the movie.

“I’m not an actor who brings the work home,” she said. “It’s part hormonal imbalance, but she’s also having an identity crisis—who am I as a mother, as a wife as a sexual person. She’s plagued with this feeling that she’s disappearing. The only way for me to dip into some of this visceral emotion.”

She continued, “Having children changes your whole life—it’s brutal and incredible. Not only does it go into every decision of if I’m working, when I’m working and where I’m working. My job has a lot to do with emotion; they’ve opened up the world to me. It’s almost like feeling a blister, so sensitive. They’ve changed my life for the best and they’ve changed me creatively. I highly recommend having kids if you want to be an actor.”

Pattinson is also a relatively new dad, welcoming his first child with Suki Waterhouse last year. But, in terms of his role in Die, My Love, he found himself being surprisingly normal while in character.

“I’m attracted to characters who are incredibly abrasive and quite obscure, but Jackson was a normal guy,” he explained. “When you’re dealing with a person going through post-partum or any kind of mental illness, you’re trying to deal with her isolation and trying to figure out what your role in the relationship is, and trying to hold on.”

Pattinson added, “He’s not a mental health professional. He’s not looking at TikTok reels about parenting. He’s hoping the relationship will go back to what it was in its purist form. He’s trying to understand why this happened.”