Jennifer Lawrence 'shared food with rats' in infested New York apartment aged 14

The actress went to great lengths to realise her ambitions

Jennifer Lawrence (Getty images)

Jennifer Lawrence has detailed the dire housing she lived in as a teenager while trying to launch her acting career in New York, claiming she was forced to eat food nibbled by rats before her ascension to Academy Award winning fame.

Lawrence is now the highest paid woman in Hollywood, earning a staggering $52 million in 2015.

But the actress, who described herself as “new money” in a recent interview with Vogue, emerged from much more humble beginnings in Kentucky, where her parents owned a farm.

The 25-year-old was scouted during a trip to New York with her family age 14. Lawrence told NPR she then saved babysitting money and moved to a kitchen-less apartment ridden with rats while she attempted to launch her acting career, living in next to nothing.

“I had a horrible apartment; it was completely rat-infested,“ she said. ”I think it’s probably gone now. My brother, who was 18, went with me at first and my parents left us and we were both like, ‘We're going to die.’

“Night was horrible, that's when [the rats] all come out. I wouldn't go to the bathroom. My dad still talks about that. He says, “That's when I knew you were serious.” I think that that was the turning point for my dad, letting me do this, because he came and saw the conditions I was living in. No hot water, there was no kitchen, it was a closet with a hot plate.”

Lawrence was on such a tight budget that any food bitten by rats could not be thrown away.

“I didn't really have any money, so if a rat had eaten my loaf of bread, before when I first got there I [would have been] like, 'Ew!' and throw the whole loaf of bread away, but eventually I was like, “God, I'm not going to be able to afford bread.” So I started just cutting around the hole that the rat ate. I got to the point where I was literally sharing food with a rat.”