Jennifer Lawrence's 36th Birthday Countdown

Jennifer Lawrence Timeline

About Jennifer Lawrence

Lawrence went from Kentucky teenager to the world's highest-paid actress: an Oscar at 22 for Silver Linings Playbook, the Katniss Everdeen role that defined a generation of blockbusters, and a reputation for being refreshingly unfiltered.

The girl who blew the doors off

A Louisville teenager with no acting training, Lawrence talked her family into letting her try New York, and by 20 she had an Oscar nomination for the flinty indie Winter's Bone. When The Hunger Games came calling, she still had to audition. Director Gary Ross said she 'blew the doors off the place,' and author Suzanne Collins wrote that she had watched Jennifer 'embody every essential quality necessary to play Katniss' - the arrow was hers.

An Oscar at 22 (and a tumble up the stairs)

In 2013 Lawrence won Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook at just 22 - then famously tripped on the stairs collecting it and laughed the moment into legend. The four Hunger Games films helped push the franchise past $3.3 billion worldwide, and Forbes crowned her the world's highest-paid actress two years running, with $52 million in 2015 and $46 million in 2016.

Two million dollars for Louisville's kids

Lawrence never really left Kentucky. After quietly visiting sick children at Louisville's Kosair Children's Hospital every holiday season for years, she donated $2 million in 2016 to build the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation Cardiac Intensive Care Unit there - then challenged her hometown to match it. She also serves on the board of RepresentUs, a nonpartisan anti-corruption nonprofit, narrating its Unbreaking America films on fixing American democracy.

Quick facts

• Born August 15, 1990, in Louisville, Kentucky
• Won the Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook at 22
• The Hunger Games franchise she led grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide
• Earned her first Oscar nomination at 20 for Winter's Bone
• Forbes' highest-paid actress in the world in both 2015 and 2016
• Donated $2 million to Louisville's Kosair Children's Hospital in 2016

Jennifer Lawrence's biggest films