Jennifer Lawrence's Hunger Games audition was best director Gary Ross had ever seen

Jennifer Lawrence wowed director Gary Ross in what would turn out to be a life-changing auditition. Photo / Getty Images

The Hunger Games movies made a bona fide star of Jennifer Lawrence.

She won an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook at the age of 24, just one year after breaking onto the big screen as Katniss Everdeen, and became the world's highest-paid actress in both 2015 and 2016.

Immensely talented, Lawrence, 30, is that once-in-a-generation actress with an indescribable magnetic screen presence.

Here's how Lawrence managed to secure the role of a lifetime a decade ago.

It turns out Hunger Games director Gary Ross, who directed the first fantasy film in 2012, immediately saw Lawrence's sparkle in her first audition. At the film's Los Angeles premiere, he declared: "[I'd] never seen an audition that good. Ever."

Ross told MTV at the time: "I saw someone who I knew I was going to be watching for decades.

"Literally, I had the kind of moment where I stepped out and thought, 'okay, this is the beginning of a great acting career. Forget about my audition.' That's honestly how I felt.

"She stunned me with the emotional depth of the audition."

Jennifer Lawrence shot to fame as Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games. Photo / Supplied

After shining in a lead role in 2010 bleak indie film Winter's Bone, the Kentucky-born actress was reeling from a couple of career setbacks when she attended the Hunger Games audition, after missing out on an unspecified role in the hit Twilight franchise.

One missed opportunity that "killed" her was losing the role of Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland to Australian actress Mia Wasikowska in the 2010 Disney film.

"The one thing that really killed me, like the only time I've ever been truly devastated by losing an audition – because most of the time you're like, 'Ah, wasn't meant to be, move on, what can you do?' – was Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland," she told Howard Stern in 2018.

Thankfully it didn't take long for things to work out, and Lawrence accepted the role of Katniss in the Lionsgate-produced film in 2011.

"Those films changed my life and in the best way possible," Lawrence said.

"And I remember thinking okay, because Twilight had come out we had kind of seen these YA (young adult) novels and what that really means, and I was like, 'okay there will come times where you regret this, but you love this character. You love this movie.'

"And I have to say I've never regretted one day of it."