Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Aronofsky Split: Looking Back at the Actress' Romances With Chris Martin and Nicholas Hoult

"I'm picky. I feel a spark very, very rarely," the actress has said of her approach to love

By Zach Johnson Nov 22, 2017 5:25 PMTags

Jennifer Lawrence is, once again, Hollywood's most eligible bachelorette.

E! News confirmed Wednesday that the 27-year-old Oscar winner and 48-year-old mother! director Darren Aronofsky quietly broke up last month. The exes mingled at the Governors Awards in L.A. 11 days ago, and their split "was amicable," a source said. "They are still friends."

Lawrence began dating the auteur in the fall of 2016, after sparks flew on the set of Paramount's mother!. As the actress recently revealed in The Hollywood Reporter's "Awards Chatter" podcast, she actually "had a crush on him" a year before they started rehearsing for the psychological horror film. "But he was a professional, which only made it worse for me. We just kind of formed a friendship. He knew how I felt; he never told me how he felt. I mean, I assumed," she said. "And then friendship turned into a partnership once we started working."

By the time filming ended, Lawrence said, "I was like, 'Alright, you're my boyfriend.'"

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Lawrence had long admired Aronofsky's work, but even she had concerns about the polarizing film. "I believed in the metaphor and the message that Darren wanted to get across," she told E! News' Catt Sadler in September 2017. "When I first read the script I thought, 'It's too dark.' I didn't even want the script in my house, and then I realized that's why he's a genius. That's why I've always wanted to work with him. He's unafraid, he's bold and I do agree with the message."

Before she began dating Aronofsky, Lawrence had jokingly resigned herself to becoming a spinster. "No one ever asks me out. I am lonely every Saturday night. Guys are so mean to me," she complained to Vogue in 2015. When it comes to romantic relationships, she said, "I'm just a girl who wants you to be nice to me. I am straight as an arrow. I feel like I need to meet a guy, with all due respect, who has been living in Baghdad for five years who has no idea who I am."

Suffice it to say, Lawrence didn't love that her love life had become so public.

Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Clear Channel

The actress spoke to the magazine months after her split with Chris Martin. She secretly began dating the Coldplay musician in July 2014, months after his ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow filed for divorce as part of their "conscious uncoupling." As a source told E! News at the time, "Gwyneth is very happy for Chris, that he has moved on and found someone else. Their split has been remarkably amiable and they both just want the best for one another." Amid rumors to the contrary, Paltrow later asked Howard Stern, "Who says I don't approve of Jennifer Lawrence? I respect him as the father of my children…[and] he wouldn't be with someone who isn't great."

But from the beginning, the A-listers had their share of problems.

After four months of dating, Lawrence and Martin broke up in October 2014. They rekindled the flame in December and continued to see each other until August 2015. During their time together, they never walked a red carpet together, nor did they ever discuss their relationship.

So, why did they call it quits for good?

"Chris doesn't really want the relationship to end, but he needs to be flexible so he can see his family as much as possible...He's crazy about Jen but wants to keep his own schedule and be able to do what he wants when he wants to do it," a Martin source told People. However, a Lawrence pal insisted that the actress was all in: "She was tired of him being so noncommittal."

Xposure/AKM-GSI

Similar to what happened with Aronofsky, Lawrence's first high-profile romance began on set. In 2010, she was cast as Mystique/Raven Darkhölme in 20th Century Fox's X-Men: First Class, where she met another up-and-coming actor: Nicholas Hoult, who played Beast/Hank McCoy. As they became world famous actors—Lawrence arguably more so than Hoult—they tried their best to stay grounded. "The privacy thing obviously changes but the rest pretty much stays the same," Hold told VMAN in 2014. "It's like that thing whereby you don't believe your own hype. Enjoy the good times, but don't get swept away with it. I think that's something she's capable of doing, and that's what makes her special, but yeah, it is very odd, and I am just kind of a bystander in many ways. It is well-deserved for her. I haven't really seen any change in her."

Lawrence and Hoult briefly split in 2013 before reuniting on- and off-screen in X-Men: Days of Future Past, released in 2014. They ended their five-year relationship for good just as she was finishing up The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. "These movies had been my life for so long and they had to come first in everything. I was also in a relationship with somebody for five years and that was my life. So, my life was this person and these movies, and we broke up around the same time that I wrapped those movies," she told Diane Sawyer a year later. "Being 24 was this whole year of, 'Who am I without these movies? Who am I without this man?'"

It may be a while before Lawrence dates again. "I'm picky. I feel a spark very, very rarely. And it's really only about spark for me. Not really anything else. You should see some of the people I find attractive. You'd be shocked," she told Glamour last year. "I don't, like, date a lot. I don't meet a lot of guys who I want to go on a date with. I'll find a guy attractive maybe once a year."