After an acting break, Jennifer Lawrence returned to the spotlight with a new lease on Hollywood but the same approach to privacy as she and husband Cooke Maroney welcomed their second baby.
Art doesn’t necessarily reflect life for Jennifer Lawrence, but playing a new mother going through a raw postpartum experience wasn’t entirely off her radar.
“Having children changes everything, it changes your whole life,” the Oscar winner told reporters in May at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where her latest film Die, My Love—starring Lawrence as a first-time mom who’s losing her mind—had its world premiere. “It’s brutal and incredible. They go into every decision of if I’m working, where I’m working, when I’m working.”
And with that, she more or less confirmed that she was a mom of more than one child, that she and husband Cooke Maroney had welcomed baby No. 2, a sibling for their now-3-year-old son Cy.
While Lawrence was known for sharing outré, often hilarious anecdotes back when she was a party of one, she still had major qualms about being too visible as a public figure—and she tripled down on privacy after meeting Maroney and starting a family.
Cy was born in February 2022, but Lawrence, who’s turning 35 Aug. 15, didn’t personally confirm his arrival, let alone his name, for months.
“It’s so scary to talk about motherhood,” she said in the October 2022 issue of Vogue. “Only because it’s so different for everybody. If I say, ‘It was amazing from the start,’ some people will think, It wasn’t amazing for me at first, and feel bad.”
The Hunger Games alum told E! News in 2017 that she felt her desire to become a mom was waning as she got older, noting that when she was 21 or 22 she couldn’t wait. As she quipped, “I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work!”
Though her relatable lack of urgency could have been attributed to having just starred in the horror allegory mother!—her then-boyfriend Darren Aronofsky‘s deeply disturbing take on it’s-still-unclear-what that doesn’t end well for mother or baby—Lawrence wasn’t yet involved with her future husband.
“He’s just the best person I’ve ever met in my whole life,” Lawrence told Entertainment Tonight about her then-fiancé in 2019, and agreeing to marry him was “a very, very easy decision.”
Which didn’t mean she was blowing smoke when she told Diane Sawyer in 2015 that she didn’t “really plan” on getting married. Rather, all it takes is (the) one.
Since her master life plan—whenever it came to fruition—included having children, regardless of whether she got married or not, Lawrence suspected that might help her zero in on Mr. Right one day.
“I feel like if I find that one person who I want to spend the rest of my life with, who I want to be the father of my children, that I would absolutely not f–k it up,” she told Vogue in 2015. “But I’m also not banking on that.”
She became Mrs. Maroney on Oct. 19, 2019, the pair exchanging vows in front of family and friends in Rhode Island.
“I definitely wasn’t at a place where I was like ‘I’m ready to get married,’” Lawrence explained on NAKED With Catt Sadler in 2019. “I just met Cooke, and I wanted to marry him. We wanted to marry each other. We wanted to commit fully. And, you know, he’s my best friend. I feel very honored to become a Maroney.”
Much later, Lawrence reflected on the anxiety she felt before she tied the knot—and during her wedding.
“It’s so stressful,” she told E! News’ Keltie Knight at the 2024 Golden Globes. “You’re not having fun. You’re just like, ‘Is that person having fun?’”
But once she returned to acting in the drama Causeway, playing a soldier who’s afraid of getting too close to anyone after suffering a traumatic brain injury, she was extra glad she’d powered through her prenuptial jitters.
“Then I went back [after making the movie], and when I’m home with my husband making this family, I’m so happy I stayed,” she told the New York Times in the fall of 2021. “I’m so happy I didn’t freak out and cancel the wedding and run away and go, ‘I’ll never be taken down!’”
The pandemic having elongated her already planned break from the spotlight, Lawrence was pregnant when she emerged from her bubble toward the end of 2021 to promote the end-of-the-world comedy Don’t Look Up.
“I just had a ton of sex,” the visibly expectant actress cracked when Late Show host Stephen Colbert asked what she’d been up to during her acting hiatus.
But she was also admittedly nervous about her return to the whole press tour circuit.
“I haven’t spoken to the world in forever,” she explained to Vanity Fair at the time. “And to come back now, when I have all of these new accessories added to my life that I obviously want to protect…I’m nervous for you. I’m nervous for me. I’m nervous for the readers!”
Lawrence told E! News in June 2022 while promoting the R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings that what type of roles she was interested in hadn’t changed, but her main concern had become where, when and for how long a project might take her away from Cy.
“Fortunately,” she told Cameron Diaz for an Interview magazine chat in June 2024, “my husband is the greatest father in the entire world, so when I’m working, I don’t have any more guilt than the usual every day, all-day parent guilt.”
(No wonder she picked a day spa as the destination for that 2022 Vogue interview. “Like, I’m a mom,” she told the publication. “I need to just lie down. This is the only time I could come to a spa and not feel guilty.”)
Lawrence admitted to Diaz that she considers “dipping out a lot” from acting when she’s working, but then another project she really wants to do always comes along.
The Silver Linings Playbook star has her concerns about Cy growing up the child of a Famous Person, and the weirdness that might cause for him, “but kids have advantages and disadvantages when they’re born, all of them,” she said. “The best thing I can do is just make sure he knows he’s loved, and that he’s our number one priority, and try to be a good example of kindness. I’m sure there will be challenges specifically from my choices and my lifestyle, and we’ll both have to confront that and deal with it when that day comes.”
In the meantime, being a mom helped her rise above what was historically one of her biggest challenges since becoming a movie star.
When it comes to paparazzi, Lawrence explained that she had no choice but to be “a little bit more Zen” about having her picture taken, because she doesn’t want to be a font of anxiety and anger in front of her son.
“You just have to accept it,” she said, “and take a deep breath and walk.”
See how Lawrence’s style has evolved through the years:
(Originally published Aug. 15, 2023, at 5 a.m. PT)
Source: www.eonline.com