Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Lionsgate/AP ImagesJennifer Lawrence can't find fault with Liam Hemsworth.
The actors became friends while filming the first Hunger Games movie, and since then, they've become inseparable. "I guess the thing that surprised me is that I would never expect to ever have a man this good-looking ever be my best friend," Lawrence marvels. "I just would never assume those things could happen, but he is. He's the most wonderful, lovable, family-oriented, sweet, hilarious, amazing guy."
Proving her point, the Academy Award winning-actress, 24, tells Nylon that her Australian co-star, 24, "actually taught me how to be fair and to stand up for myself. It's my biggest weakness: negotiating. I'm a wimp about standing up for myself and Liam is always fair. He's always on time, he's always doing his job, and he's good about making sure that things stay fair. He's teaching me to toughen up a little bit."
"That was important," Lawrence admits. "I need that."
When the cast and crew wrapped production on The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (coming to theaters in 2015), Lawrence realized she won't likely see Hemsworth or Josh Hutcherson as regularly. "We're still best friends with each other, and we talk to each other all the time—way too much—but it's different," the leading lady explains. "If all I had was this friendship with Josh and Liam—if that's all I ever got from this—I would consider it a blessing. Our lives changed together and we had each other."
Lawrence takes her friendships very seriously.
"I have an amazing group of people around me. I surround myself with 'no' people," the Silver Linings Playbook star explains. "They will tell me, 'Stop doing that' or 'You look terrible'—honest, real people." It's not just friends who keep Lawrence in line, though. "My publicists I've had since I was 16 years old, they watched me grow up and they know me and they do love me; my agent, I've had since I was 17."
Although she's one of the most famous women in the world, Lawrence is as down-to-earth as ever. It's her friends, she says, who've helped her stay sane. "I have an amazing group of friends who are not in the business who I've been friends with for years before any of this happened that I trust. Something strange does happen that you don't expect," she says. "A very tiny thing that makes a big emotional difference is just the way people look at you. Because I don't feel any different, and so sometimes when you go out and you see the way that people look at you, it makes you feel alienated and kind of odd."
"I try to surround myself with people that never look at me that way, never fake laugh at my jokes."