Jennifer Lawrence has reflected on missing out on the role of Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, saying she was made to feel she was “not pretty enough” to play the late actor.
The Hunger Games star, 35, also confirmed she had previously turned down a role in the directors Western thriller The Hateful Eight.
Speaking during a live recording of the Happy Sad Confused with Josh Horowitz, Lawrence responded to the host’s suggestion that Tarantino had been “chasing” her to work together. “I don’t know about that,” said Lawrence.
After Horowitz said that the fugitive role of Daisy Domergue played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2015’s The Hateful Eight was originally written for Lawrence, the actor admitted: “I turned it down, which I should not have done.”
Asked whether Tarantino also wanted her to star in 2019’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Lawrence said: “Well, he did, and then everybody was like: ‘She’s not pretty enough to play Sharon Tate,’ and then they didn’t.”
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When Horowitz questioned whether that was true, Lawrence continued: “I’m pretty sure it is true. Or it’s that thing where I’ve been telling this story this way for so long that I believe it. No, but I — I’m pretty sure that happened — or, he just never was considering me for the part and the internet just, like, went out of their way to call me ugly.”
Margot Robbie went on to play Tate, the star of 1967’s Valley of the Dolls who was murdered by the Manson Family in 1969.
Tarantino has previously commented on Lawrence’s potential involvement in The Hateful Eight, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2015 that he is a “huge Jennifer Lawrence fan” but that the actor was too busy with “all this publicity on the Hunger Games movies.”
During a 2021 appearance on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Tarantino said he had “investigated the idea of Jennifer Lawrence playing Squeaky,” one of Charles Manson’s followers, in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. The part was eventually taken by Dakota Fanning.
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Prior to the release of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Tate’s sister Debra told TMZ she would prefer Margot Robbie play her sister because of her “physical beauty, and the way she even carries herself is similar to that of Sharon.”
She added that she felt Lawrence is “not pretty enough to play Sharon. That’s a horrible thing to say but, you know, I have my standards.”