Jennifer Lawrence has fired back at Liam Hemsworth’s decade-old claim that she deliberately ate foul-smelling foods before their on-screen kisses.
The Oscar-winning actress, 36, addressed the allegation during a recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast hosted by Alex Cooper. Hemsworth, 34, first made the complaint in a 2014 interview with Jimmy Fallon, saying Lawrence would consume garlic or tuna fish right before their kissing scenes in The Hunger Games franchise.
“He made it seem like that’s just like something I did like on purpose,” Lawrence told Cooper. “Like, I would just… eat tuna.”
Lawrence did concede she enjoys tuna, but pushed back hard on the idea that she strategically loaded up on it before locking lips with her Australian co-star. She pointed to the realities of a months-long film shoot as the more likely explanation for any off-camera dietary overlap.
The pair starred together in the blockbuster dystopian series beginning with 2012’s The Hunger Games, where Lawrence played Katniss Everdeen and Hemsworth portrayed Gale Hawthorne. Their characters shared kissing scenes in the first two installments of the four-film franchise.
Hemsworth’s original comments to Fallon painted a playful but unflattering picture. “When you look at it on the outside, it looks like a great picture. She’s one of my best friends. I love her,” he said. “But if we had a kissing scene, she would make a point of eating garlic or tuna fish, or something that was disgusting.”
He continued: “Right before the scene, she’d be like, ‘Yeah, I ate tuna,’ or ‘I had garlic, and I didn’t brush my teeth’. And I’d be like, ‘Fantastic, I can’t wait to get in there and taste it!'”
Lawrence suggested her behavior with Hemsworth may have been somewhat more casual than with other co-stars. She contrasted it directly with her approach during 2013’s American Hustle, where she played Rosalyn Rosenfeld opposite Christian Bale.
“I did American Hustle with Christian Bale and I was like, ‘Oh damn’ and I was really clean and ate lots and lots of mints,” she quipped on the podcast.
The resurfaced dispute comes as Lawrence has been unusually candid about her personal life in recent interviews. Speaking to The Cut, the mother of two revealed she has undergone a breast lift and expressed interest in eventually getting a face lift.
“At drop-off, I want to look like a woman that has her [expletive] together even when I’ve just woken up and don’t have my [expletive] together,” she shared.
One cosmetic procedure Lawrence ruled out entirely is buccal fat removal. She explained her reasoning bluntly: everybody would know she had done it.
The garlic-and-tuna saga originated from Hemsworth’s 2014 Tonight Show appearance, where he presented the habit as a deliberate prank by his co-star during their Hunger Games shoot. Lawrence’s new comments mark the first time she has directly challenged his characterization of events, framing any pre-kiss meals as coincidence rather than sabotage.