‘He’s my best friend’ ... David O. Russell and Jennifer Lawrence are rumoured to have clashed. Picture: Splash. Source: Supplied
DIRECTOR David O. Russell has infamously clashed with George Clooney and Lily Tomlin but sources say he caused Jennifer Lawrence to have a ‘meltdown’.
The director has worked with Lawrence on the set of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle and the pair are currently shooting the movie Joy together.
However, sources say there hasn’t been quite as much joy on set.
The New York Post reports that The Hunger Games star had “a meltdown” on Tuesday night while filming.
“He was screaming at her. She was screaming at him. It was loud,” said the witness. But a publicist for the Fox movie told me, “There was no fight. David is very passionate. He yells lines back at actors. He gets right in the scene with them. This scene was a big argument. Jennifer had a crying baby in her arms. There was a lot of screaming and yelling.”
Silver lining ... Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell have now worked together on three films. Picture: Splash Source: Supplied
Lawrence has also released a statement denying a rift.
“David O. Russell is one of my closest friends and we have an amazing collaborative working relationship. I adore this man and he does not deserve this tabloid malarky. This movie is going great and I’m having a blast making it!” she said.
Lawrence plays Joy Mangano, a Long Island single mum who invented the Miracle Mop and became one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs. Robert De Niro plays her father. The cast also features Bradley Cooper, Virginia Madsen and Diane Ladd.
My source said Lawrence has also had trouble memorising her lines because Russell has multiple versions of the screenplay circulating.
“He’ll say read pages 15 to 20, but the pages are different in different scripts, and she’ll memorise the wrong scene,” said the insider.
Lily Tomlin v David O Russell - Very Course Language
Russell has infamously clashed with actors before on set.
Footage leaked of a shouting match with actor Lily Tomlin on the set of I (Heart) Huckabees. However Tomlin has forgiven the director.
“David is a very mercurial person, and that’s part of why he’s so brilliant,” she said. “We just both had a bad temper fit,” she told Movieline in 2011.
George Clooney took umbridge with the director while they were filming Three Kings with regards to Russell’s apparent mistreatment of various crew members.
“You can’t shove, push or humiliate people,” Clooney is reported to have said before the pair ended up in a psyscial fight. Five years later, Clooney was still seething, telling Premiere magazine that he would “sock Russell in the f***ing mouth” if he ran into him.
Lawrence was nominated for Academy Awards for her two previous movies directed by Russell, American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, winning for the latter.
