JENNIFER LAWRENCE REUNITES WITH BRADLEY COOPER IN IN “JOY”

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JENNIFER LAWRENCE REUNITES WITH BRADLEY COOPER IN A MODERN-DAY CINDERELLA STORY IN “JOY” MOVIE

                Based loosely on the life and rise of inventor and home shopping star Joy Mangano, starring Jennifer Lawrence in the titular role for which she is nominated in the Best Actress category in this year’s Academy Awards, the genre-blurring story of “Joy” follows the wild path of a hard-working but half-broken family and the young girl who ultimately becomes its shining matriarch and leader in her own right.  Driven to create and take care of those around her, Joy experiences betrayal, treachery, the loss of innocence and the scars of love.  Ultimately, she finds the steel and the belief to follow her once-suppressed dreams.  The result is an emotional and human comedy about a woman’s rise – navigating the unforgiving world of commerce, the chaos of family and the mysteries of inspiration while finding an unyielding source of happiness.

                Joining Lawrence is a typically wide-ranging Russell ensemble including Robert De Niro as Joy’s hot-tempered yet hopelessly romantic father; Edgar Ramirez as Joy’s ex-husband, a struggling musician living in the basement … with her father; Diane Ladd as Joy’s insightful and influential grandmother; Virginia Madsen as Joy’s soap-opera addicted mother; Isabella Rossellini as her father’s well-off Italian lover; Dascha Polanco as Joy’s life-long friend and confidante,; Elisabeth Rohm as Joy’s rivalrous sister and Bradley Cooper as the mogul-style home shopping executive who becomes both Joy’s ally and adversary. 

                Outside of Joy’s family, her biggest ally – and later her greatest business rival – is QVC executive Neil Walker, portrayed by long-lived David O. Russell collaborator Bradley Cooper, an Oscar® nominee for Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle as well as Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper.   Cooper and Russell talked about bringing a dash of early Hollywood mogul to the character, having Cooper explore an easy flair and optimism new to their work together.

                The character both soothes Joy with his exuberant love of invention and fires her up to outdo his expectations.  Cooper explains:  “Neil’s a fictional composite of several people at QVC who worked with Joy.  What’s so interesting about him is that he’s a guy who becomes more relaxed the more the pressure increases.  I liken him to certain coaches I had growing up who were always on an even keel amidst utter chaos – and in that way I think he has a kinship with Joy.  At the same time, he takes his business very seriously.  He sees himself as a Jack Warner or Daryl Zanuck, building an empire of dreams.  He’s not messing around and there’s no irony to him.  He believes everything he says.” 

                Rather than a typically malevolent corporate presence, Cooper approached Neil as someone who is exhilarated by giving people that one-in-a-million shot.  “Neil is someone who doesn’t look like other television executives, just as Joy doesn’t look like an inventor,” Cooper observes.  “And he’s very aware that he was given a chance by Barry Diller to make QVC work.  So he loves that he’s now in a position to give others who might be iconoclasts the chance to realize their biggest ideas.  When he meets Joy, she’s on the precipice of changing her life and he gives her that opportunity.” 

                Cooper notes that he grew up with QVC.  “My mother always ordered from QVC, and it was always on in my parents’ bedroom,” he recalls.  “I’d come home from school and the front door would be wedged open with a QVC package waiting.  I even had the Miracle Mop in my college dorm.” 

                He had fun exploring the behind-the-scenes life of that world he only saw from the other side.  But Cooper’s greatest pleasure was watching Jennifer Lawrence fully embody Joy. “She has become this incredible force. She always was from the start – but now it’s being realized in new ways,” he comments.  “She has this grounded, very rooted way of walking through a movie.  It’s similar to what I’ve encountered with De Niro; I find them very similar in terms of the way they approach the work.  That’s probably why David works with both of them over and over.” 

THE RISE OF A FAMILY BOSS WHO INVENTED MIRACLE MOP IN WINNING TELENOVELA MOVIE “JOY”

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  Starring Jennifer Lawrence in the title role, the relatable incredible success story in “Joy,” helmed by director David O. Russell explores of how one person, confronted with madcap circumstances, endless obstacles and a long road of self-searching, forges a meaningful, joyful life, loosely based on the life of Joy Mangano (home TV shopping magnate).

Credit: 20th Century Fox

                The film stars Academy Award® winner Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games series) as Joy, in a multi-hued portrait that spans from youth to her 40s, from dreams deferred to fighting for her honor to striving for self-fulfillment. 

                Says Lawrence: “This is a story about so many things.  It’s not just the story of Joy. It’s about family, imagination, faith in yourself, about the ruthlessness of success and what it means when you find it. I love most of all how much Joy changes.  I loved taking her from vulnerable and self-deprecating to cold and strong, and I loved that she turns into a real matriarch of her family.” 

                Joining Jennifer Lawrence on the journey of “Joy” is a wide-ranging, hugely accomplished ensemble cast typical of David O. Russell’s films including Robert De Niro as Joy’s hot-tempered yet hopelessly romantic father. De Niro embraced Rudy’s massive contradictions – his fiery temper and romantic charm, his blue-collar work ethic and love of style, his paternal regrets and love for his children. 

                If Rudy is a thorn in Joy’s life, Golden Globe nominee Edgar Ramirez takes on the role of Joy’s ex-husband, and is literally the man beneath her feet – still living in her basement (with her father) even though they are irrevocably divorced.  Russell was intrigued immediately when he learned Joy Mangano was still close friends with her ex.  “It’s a story not often seen on screen, where a couple gets divorced, yet remain best friends,” says the writer-director. 

                Joy’s bedrock supporter is her insightful and influential grandmother, Mimi, her role model as she tries to lead the family forward as a matriarch. Portraying Joy’s biggest champion is Diane Ladd, who has appeared in more than 120 film and television roles since she started her career on a 1970s soap opera and garnered three Academy Award® nominations:  for Martin Scorsese’ ode to female independence, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, David Lynch’s Wild At Heart and Martha Coolidge’s Rambling Rose.  Ladd says she was flat-out moved by the story.  “We’re not living in the easiest of times, but I think this story reminds us that we all have a right to try to fulfill a dream.  A lot of times you have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off but this film says ‘Get out there and don’t give up.’” 

                Lawrence was fascinated by how Joy stays so focused on her family’s constant needs– and then, suddenly, takes a dauntless leap for herself.  “I think Joy always felt she had to be the rock of her family, the foundation holding everyone up,” she observes. “She forfeited her dreams to support everyone else and put them on hold for almost her entire life.   She put other people in front for so long that I think it took time for her to realize there was something else inside her that had to be expressed, that had to breathe.  And I think that’s why the story of Joy had to span four generations, because it often takes that long to create a full life.  Joy kept burying that inventive part of herself but when she finally finds the faith in herself to move forward, it’s unstoppable when that happens.  It’s addicting when you find that inner strength.”

JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN "JOY"

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RAGS-TO-RICHES STORY OF A STRUGGLING SINGLE MOM IN JENNIFER LAWRENCE STARRER “JOY”

                Close to home, “Joy” introduces us to a woman who carries it all, played by Jennifer Lawrence in the titular role – being a single mom, caring for her parents, paying the bills and working 24/7 just to make ends meet.

Photo credit: 20th Century Fox

                “Joy” follows on the heels of diretor David O. Russell’s “The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle,” which between them garnered 25 Oscar® nominations.  Each unleashed an unforgettable array of cinematic characters yet also honed in on a singularly compelling idea:  the allure and trials of re-inventing oneself.  Joy takes that same idea somewhere new – as Russell takes on the question of how one person, confronted with madcap circumstances, endless obstacles and a long road of self-searching, forges a meaningful, joyful life. 

                While Joy’s life moves forward, the film’s style hearkens back in time, revisiting and redesigning the craftsmanship and melodrama of classical Hollywood cinema for our image-laden times.  The film stars Academy Award® winner Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games series) as Joy, in a multi-hued portrait that spans from youth to her 40s, from dreams deferred to fighting for her honor to striving for self-fulfillment. 

                Says Lawrence: “This is a story about so many things.  It’s not just the story of Joy. It’s about family, imagination, faith in yourself, about the ruthlessness of success and what it means when you find it. I love most of all how much Joy changes.  I loved taking her from vulnerable and self-deprecating to cold and strong, and I loved that she turns into a real matriarch of her family.” 

                Joining Lawrence is a typically wide-ranging Russell ensemble including Robert De Niro as Joy’s hot-tempered yet hopelessly romantic father; Edgar Ramirez as Joy’s ex-husband, a struggling musician living in the basement … with her father; Diane Ladd as Joy’s insightful and influential grandmother; Virginia Madsen as Joy’s soap-opera addicted mother; Isabella Rossellini as her father’s well-off Italian lover; Dascha Polanco as Joy’s life-long friend and confidante,; Elisabeth Rohm as Joy’s rivalrous sister and Bradley Cooper as the mogul-style home shopping executive who becomes both Joy’s ally and adversary. 

                “Joy” joins a long legacy of films about chasing dreams of success in business and family -- but it does so in its own comedic, emotional and inventive ways.  The story began with the unlikely but real-life narrative of Joy Mangano, who in the 1990s became a new kind of television star and entrepreneurial powerhouse with a series of household inventions, including the famed, “self-wringing” Miracle Mop, which kicked-off the Long Island single mother’s ongoing business empire.

               

                Says Russell:  “The idea that drew me was how do you tell the story of more than 40 years of a life, from the magic of childhood, through marriage, divorce and single parenthood, to going back to fulfilling on those childhood dreams?  How do you tell the story of a person’s soul – and how that soul is comprised of all the people we love, the ideas we have, the things we cherish?  JOY brings together all these pieces. You have trauma and love.  You have a girl who grows up in her father's metal garage and in her mother’s refuge of soap operas filled with strong women.  You have a dreamer ex-husband in the basement who is still a friend and a loving sister who is an envious rival.  And you have a cable television station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that becomes a factory of dreams.  In the middle of it all, you see Joy develop a quietly fierce determination that sees her through.” 

“JOY” MOVIE STARRING JENNIFER LAWRENCE NOMINATED IN BEST PICTURE AND BEST ACTRESS CATEGORY

Press release

Academy Award® winner Jennifer Lawrence stars in this year’s highly-anticipated movie “Joy” this awards season directed by of David O. Russell that probes four decades in the upward-moving life of a single-mom-turned-business-magnate to explore how daring, resilience and the persistence of vision carry people from the ordinary into extraordinary moments of creation, striving and love.    

                “Joy” has recently been nominated for two major awards in the upcoming (2016) Golden Globes – Best Motion Picture, Comedy and Best Actress In a Motion Picture, Comedy (Jennifer Lawrence).  "I am incredibly grateful to be recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press for my role in JOY. It was an enormous privilege to play such an amazing woman. And it is an honor to be among the other extraordinarily talented women in this category. I share this with David O. Russell and the incredible cast and crew,” says Lawrence on her nomination.

                The movie is based loosely on the life and rise of inventor and home shopping star Joy Mangano, the genre-blurring story of JOY follows the wild path of a hard-working but half-broken family and the young girl who ultimately becomes its shining matriarch and leader in her own right.  The result is an emotional and human comedy about a woman’s rise – navigating the unforgiving world of commerce, the chaos of family and the mysteries of inspiration while finding an unyielding source of happiness.

                “Joy” follows on the heels of David O. Russell’s “The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle,” which between them garnered 25 Oscar® nominations.  Each unleashed an unforgettable array of cinematic characters yet also honed in on a singularly compelling idea:  the allure and trials of re-inventing oneself.  Joy takes that same idea somewhere new – as Russell takes on the question of how one person, confronted with madcap circumstances, endless obstacles and a long road of self-searching, forges a meaningful, joyful life.  While Joy’s life moves forward, the film’s style hearkens back in time, revisiting and redesigning the craftsmanship and melodrama of classical Hollywood cinema for our image-laden times. 

                Joining Lawrence is a typically wide-ranging Russell ensemble including Robert De Niro as Joy’s hot-tempered yet hopelessly romantic father; Edgar Ramirez as Joy’s ex-husband, a struggling musician living in the basement … with her father; Diane Ladd as Joy’s insightful and influential grandmother; Virginia Madsen as Joy’s soap-opera addicted mother; Isabella Rossellini as her father’s well-off Italian lover; Dascha Polanco as Joy’s life-long friend and confidante,; Elisabeth Rohm as Joy’s rivalrous sister and Bradley Cooper as the mogul-style home shopping executive who becomes both Joy’s ally and adversary. 

                Says Lawrence: “This is a story about so many things.  It’s not just the story of Joy. It’s about family, imagination, faith in yourself, about the ruthlessness of success and what it means when you find it. I love most of all how much Joy changes.  I loved taking her from vulnerable and self-deprecating to cold and strong, and I loved that she turns into a real matriarch of her family.” 

                “Joy” is released by 20^th Century Fox and distributed by Warner Bros.