Ledger Pop Journal - Celebrity News & Sports

Sounds like Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron certainly hasn't let her
megastar status go to her head. "She drove to New Mexico because she had her, like, 50-year-old dog with her and couldn't fly," reports Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the troubled teen version of Theron's character in "Babel," screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga's upcoming directorial debut "The Burning Plain."

Charlize Theron Makes an Impression (Image: Wenn)

"She didn't have any assistant drive, she drove down herself. She stayed in just a normal hotel room, no suite or anything which made me feel like a diva cause I'm staying in 'the apartment.' She waits in line, she eats with the crew … She is the most real and down to earth person I've ever met. I just love her so much. And she is funny, just hilarious. She has a mouth on her that could make a grip blush. There isn't a sentence that comes out of her mouth that doesn't have the 'F' word in it."

Lawrence -- who's back shooting the second season of TBS' sitcom "The Bill Engvall Show" returning June 12, on which she plays the oldest child – admits it was a little intimidating having to do her thing in front of Theron at first. "She had to play me as an older person, so it was like no pressure or anything, right? You're just setting the lead for (ital) Charlize Theron (end ital) to follow you. So she was there on the set watching and studying me." She adds of Theron's transition, "I don't even know how to describe how incredible it is. The way she did every movement, every facial expression I didn't even know I did … she, like, did it perfectly. I've never seen anything like it. I was just in awe."

KNOCKOUT: Jason Lewis reports he did "a lot of boxing training" to get into proper pugilistic form for the upcoming "The Pardon" film in which Jaime King plays Toni Jo Heny, the only woman to die in the electric chair in Louisiana. However, he found that his fighting technique "didn't apply" when he got before the cameras. He recalls being told by the cinematographer, "'That was a great punch. I can't see it.' Real fighting is quick and tight, and movie fighting is big and slow." The period film has the "Sex and the City" hunk playing " a guy who's basically a drifter and a petty criminal, who's gotten involved in some bad s--- club fighting in barns. She's a hooker. They fall in love and she ends up trying to help him and gets in trouble with the law. The press fell for her because she was such a knockout, and the idea of executing a woman was so stunning at that time."

The team worked in Shreveport, with the actors toiling in wool outfits and other less-than-comfortable period clothes in sweltering heat. Notes Lewis, "One of the drivers I got friendly with was a cool older dude who'd grown up around that area. He remembered the whole thing when it happened. 'They moved the electric chair place to place,'" he said. "It was a really heavy thing."