Jennifer Lawrence gave two of the best performances of her career alongside this late great actor.
It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly Jennifer Lawrence “broke out” and became a defining actress of her generation. Was it when she took on the role of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, the other film franchise inspired by a young adult novel series outside of Harry Potter that anyone actually cared about? Was it when she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Winter’s Bone, a film that surprisingly snuck into the Best Picture race? Was it when she joined a comic book franchise with her role as Mystique, who transformed a quintessential X-Men anti-hero in X-Men: First Class into the emotional crux of the series by the time that Dark Phoenix came out? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Jennifer Lawrence truly became the household name she is today, but her collaborations with Bradley Cooper were also crucial stepping stones on her path toward mega-stardom. However, long before Lawrence and Cooper shared the screen for the first time in Silver Linings Playbook, she had a different co-star in the late great Anton Yelchin. The two co-starred opposite each other in The Beaver and Like Crazy before a tragic accident took Yelchin’s life in 2016.

Why Were Jennifer Lawrence and Anton Yelchin’s Collaborations So Strong?
The issue with Jennifer Lawrence’s collaborations with Bradley Cooper over time became that they were essentially playing different versions of the same roles. Both actors excelled at playing highly confident, slightly unhinged characters who tend to get themselves in over their heads when they overestimate their abilities. This worked wonders in Silver Linings Playbook because of the emotional vulnerability that they both brought to their performances; not only did Silver Linings Playbook become Lawrence’s Academy Award-winning role, but it was also the film that showed that Bradley Cooper was more than just the goofy guy from The Hangover and Wedding Crashers. However, over time these qualities started to fade. American Hustle and Joy saw them doing more of the same (albeit in more exaggerated roles), and their one attempt to break free of the trend with more mature work in Serena proved to be disastrous. However, there was a vulnerability in Jennifer Lawrence’s work with Anton Yelchin that was absent in her later films.

With The Beaver and Like Crazy, there was a sense of discovery that came with Jennifer Lawrence’s performance — the joy of seeing a performer develop their abilities for the first time. Anton Yelchin had been an established performer for a while at this point, as he had already given breakout performances in Alpha Dog and Charlie Bartlett that relied upon his youth. However, franchise vehicles like Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation didn’t truly test him. Like Crazy was the film that showed he was a real “actor’s actor,” and not just a child star testing his abilities. Yelchin and Lawrence proved to be a perfect pair, and it’s sad to look back at what could have been when seeing the spark between them in Like Crazy. The two had such instant chemistry that it was hard to not imagine them as the Robert Redford and Jane Fonda of their generation.
Why Are ‘Like Crazy’ and ‘The Beaver’ Underrated Movies?

Like Crazy is the type of “Sundance breakout” film that has been replicated countless times in the decade since its release. The notion of two stars riding the high of an indie darling was still exciting in 2011, though, as the media didn’t instantly fixate on what comic book characters they could play next. Like Crazy is not a complicated film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a very simple romantic drama that follows the relationship between the American student Jacob Helm (Yelchin) and his British lover Anna Gardner (Felicity Jones); when Anna’s visa expires and she has to return to her home country, Jacob briefly considers a relationship with his neighbor Samantha (Lawrence). Jones and Yelchin are so electrifying together in the earlier scenes that it’s hard not to instantly hate Samantha, but Lawrence is so endearing that she turns the audience’s expectations on their head.
If Like Crazy represents the sort of love triangle romantic film that breaks out on the indie market a few times a year, then The Beaver is the sort of unhinged vanity project that only a major Hollywood star could make; sadly, neither of these subgenres seem to be ones that the theatrical marketplace supports right now. The Beaver centers on the depressed toy company owner Walter Black (Mel Gibson), who begins to use a talking beaver puppet as his primary form of communication after a suicide attempt. The oddity of this new coping method causes Walter to get into greater conflicts with his son Porter (Yelchin), whose primary interests at the moment include avoiding his father and trying to gauge the interest of the class valedictorian Norah (Lawrence).

Despite its plot contrivances and the obviously uncomfortable aspect of seeing Gibson in what’s intended as a sympathetic role, The Beaver is actually a fairly standard family drama. However, it’s again the chemistry between Yelchin and Lawrence that elevates it. Both characters have a deep sense of longing, guilt, and sadness that they’re embarrassed to share; Porter is ashamed of his father, and Norah is coping with the death of her brother. There’s a moment where Norah reads her valedictorian speech (which Porter agreed to write for her) that should feel unbelievably cheesy. However, Lawrence’s personability makes it the emotional highlight of the film. It’s clear that Porter’s words about healing, forgiveness, and letting go also resonate with her; it’s evident that both characters had an indelible impact on each other’s lives.
Those that can stomach the emotional gut punch will definitely want to check out the documentary Love, Antosha to see what Lawrence had to say about her late co-star. She mentions being “in awe” of his abilities, a touching tribute considering that the audience has seemingly always been in awe of her. While it’s hard not to be sad about what could have been, it’s worth appreciating what Jennifer Lawrence and Anton Yelchin left us with.

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