Superhero costumes may look cinematically sensational on the big screen, but the next time you’re staring agog at your favorite Marvel or DC hero, spare a thought for how much the actor inside the spandex is suffering for their art. That’s something X-Men star Jennifer Lawrence understands all too well.
Lawrence played the second incarnation of Mystique, aka Raven Darkholme, in Fox’s X-Men franchise, taking over the role from original trilogy star Rebecca Romijn. With her distinctive scaly, blue skin and lack of clothing, Mystique is easily one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable of the characters in the X-universe. But embodying such a body-positive anti-heroine wasn’t always fun for The Hunger Games star.
Jennifer Lawrence refused to inhale “fumes” as Mystique, but her replacement costume was even worse
For her first two X-Men movies, Lawrence’s costume, if that is the correct term, mostly involved full body paint. In First Class, the process took a total of eight hours but it was streamlined down to three hours for Days of Future Past. For X-Men: Apocalypse, Lawrence put her foot down and opted to avoid any paint this time around in favor of a skintight suit which she described as a “blue pantyhose that goes around my whole body.”
That might sound easier than becoming an arts and crafts project every morning, but the new costume brought with it its own challenges, thanks to a shocking lack of foresight on the designers’ part. As Lawrence revealed on The Graham Norton Show in 2016:
“The guys who made it were like: ‘Well, she’s a girl. She doesn’t go to the bathroom!’ So, I pee standing up out of a funnel.”
While the skintight suit was less appealing in the short-term, though, it probably had a better effect long-term than the Mystique paint job. Like Lawrence admitted to EW in 2015: “I love these movies — it’s just the paint.”
When she was just 19 years old making First Class, Lawrence says she “didn’t care about fumes and toxins,” but by the time of Apocalypse, when she was much more experienced and savvy, the Passengers actress realized the potential health risks at play.
“Now I’m almost 25,” she said at the time. “And I’m like: ‘I can’t even pronounce this and that’s going in my nose? I’m breathing that?’”
The complications with the ins-and-out of actually playing Mystique — or rather getting in and out of the costume, specifically — are probably why we’re unlikely to see Lawrence reprise Raven in the MCU. Although, who knows, she may be one of those crazy Deadpool 3 legacy cameos the director is teasing.
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