How Jennifer Lawrence Nearly Ruined her ‘American Hustle’ Dress

Francois Duhamel/Annapurna Productions

Jennifer Lawrence has made it clear that she’ll eat whatever she wants when she wants — even if she’s wearing a skin-tight, custom-made white gown on the set of her latest film.
The Oscar-nominated costume designer of “American Hustle,” Michael Wilkinson revealed how Lawrence nearly ruined her character’s iconic white dress with Doritos dust.
“Jennifer Lawrence is a very . . . let’s say . . . raw and intuitive young lady, and she’s not against eating Doritos and snack food in her costume,” Wilkinson said at at an awards-season discussion moderated by Vanity Fair at the Diane von Furstenberg exhibit in Los Angeles Tuesday night.

Fortunately, Wilkinson had some backup dresses. Because Lawrence’s character, the jealous and unpredictable Rosalyn, was originally supposed to spill champagne over herself in the scene where she confronts her husband’s mistress, played by Amy Adams, the designer had constructed four different versions of the dress.

“And I’m kind of glad we did,” Wilkinson said.
Also fortunate for the production, the fabric Wilkinson chose was only $3.99 per yard because director David O. Russell was intent on the dress looking cheap and stretchy.
“David really had it set in his mind that she would be wearing this dress that she just poured herself into,” Wilkinson said. “He wanted to see every single lump and bump. There had to be a sense of, ‘Is she going to fall out of it?’ It had this dangerous feeling to it, which matched her own dangerous mental landscape.”

In the past Lawrence has joked about demanding tasty snacks on set at all times while she’s filming.
“My bodyguard Gilbert, right before they call ‘action,’ I’m like, ‘If there aren’t Cheez-Its here by the time they call ‘cut,’ just go home,’” she told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. for its November cover issue. “And he’ll start running. It cracks me up how seriously he takes it.”
But Lawrence was serious when she told the magazine, “If anybody even tries to whisper the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go f*** yourself.’”