The actress spoke to “The Woman King” star Viola Davis for Variety, a conversation steeped in Oscar-style campaigning. The duo chatted about a number of subjects, including female-led action movies … like “The Woman King.”

To hear Lawrence tell it, they didn’t exist until she played Katniss Everdeen in 2012’s “The Hunger Games.”

“I remember when I was doing “Hunger Games,” nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead. And it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies. To keep certain people in the same positions that they’ve always been in.”

[Sigourney Weaver, Angelina Jolie, and the late Carrie Fisher may want a word with Lawrence. Read all of Christian’s commentary on this. — Ed]