Jennifer Lawrence has finally joined Instagram, debuting a verified account under the handle @jlaw on Wednesday, September 9, after spending more than a decade without any public social media presence. She couldn't use her own name for the account, since another user had already claimed @jenniferlawrence years earlier, that account's bio reads, "I'm not famous but I do have a famous name." Lawrence addressed the mix-up with characteristic humour in her own bio, writing simply, "jenniferlawrence was taken."
Despite not having posted anything to her grid yet, she'd already amassed well over 170,000 followers within hours of the account going live, with that number continuing to climb. Lawrence, 36, has long been candid about her aversion to social media. Speaking to BBC Radio 1 back in 2014, she said flatly, "I will never get Twitter. I'm not very good on the phone or technology. I cannot really keep up with emails so the idea of Twitter is so unthinkable to me... It's like this weird enigma that people talk about. I respect that."
She briefly had an official Facebook page run by her team, which has since been shut down. In a 2018 interview with InStyle, she described herself as more of a silent observer than a participant online, "I'm on it. But I'm a voyeur: I watch, I don't speak." She's also acknowledged maintaining a secret, anonymous presence on TikTok, telling Fandango she gets into arguments in comment sections there, joking that her incognito persona started off with conversations about the Real Housewives franchise before intensifying once she began weighing in on the British royal family.
It's unclear exactly why Lawrence chose now to finally go public, though the move likely ties into promotion for her upcoming film projects. She has a rumoured small cameo in the upcoming Hunger Games prequel film out this November, and stars in next year's What Happens at Night. Her early following list offers some hints about her circle, including What Happens at Night collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, Hunger Games co-star Josh Hutcherson, friends Dakota Johnson and Suki Waterhouse, and several members of the Kardashian-Jenner family.