She volunteered as tribute.
Jennifer Lawrence lost a major movie role to Margot Robbie — and she thinks she knows why.
Quentin Tarantino “did” want her to star in 2019’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Lawrence told the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “And then everybody was like, ‘She’s not pretty enough to play Sharon Tate.’ And then they didn’t.”
In the movie, the role ultimately went to “Barbie” star Margot Robbie, 35.
“The Hunger Games” actress, 35, said, “I’m pretty sure it is true. Or it’s that thing where I’ve been telling the story this way for so long that I believe it. No, but I’m pretty sure that happened. Or he just was never considering me for the part, and the internet just like went out of their way to call me ugly.”
The “Die My Love” actress did reveal that she turned down a different Tarantino role, in 2015’s “The Hateful Eight.” She was offered the role of Daisy, which ultimately went to Jennifer Jason Leigh, 63.
“I turned it down. I should not have done [that],” the Oscar-winning actress said.
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was a revisionist history of the Manson family murders, which claimed the life of Tate. The “Valley of the Dolls” actress was murdered at 26 in 1969, when she was pregnant.
Along with Robbie, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the film. In the movie, Tate lives.
At the time in 2017, when Lawrence was being floated as a possible actress to play Tate, the murdered actress’ sister, Debra, 73, told TMZ, “She’s not pretty enough to play Sharon,” referring to Lawrence.
She added, “My pick would be Margot [Robbie] simply because of her physical beauty and even the way she carries herself is similar to Sharon.”
After Robbie was cast, Debra, a victims rights advocate, told Vanity Fair that she visited the set and watching Robbie perform made her cry. “…Because she sounded just like Sharon,” she elaborated.
To make matters more unclear, however, Tarantino’s account conflicts with Lawrence’s.
On a 2021 episode of “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast, the “Pulp Fiction” director claimed that he had Lawrence in mind for the role of Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, not Tate.
The role ultimately went to Dakota Fanning.
“She came down to the house and I gave her the script and said: “Go in my living room or go outside by the pool and read it,”‘ Tarantino recalled, referring to Lawrence.
He added, “She read it, and afterward, we talked about it a little bit. She was interested in doing it, but something didn’t work out.”
This isn’t the first time Lawrence has publicly spoken about losing roles, as she also recently said that she lost the “Easy A” role to her best friend, Emma Stone.
