LOS ANGELES A black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows is idling in front of the Four Seasons Hotel, when the right rear window slides down to reveal Jennifer Lawrence looking like a movie star. Makeup flawless. Hair glowing. She smiles brightly and waves to onlookers as the vehicle pulls around to get onto Doheny Drive. Then it stops, as the star of the Next Big Blockbuster – “The Hunger Games,” shot in North Carolina and in theaters Friday – greets fans toting movie posters emblazoned with her likeness, signs a dozen of them, then waves again as the Escalade peels away. A dozen down, a million to go. It’s a big change for Lawrence, 21, who just over a year ago was living among an ocean of young actresses fighting for roles in smaller films and assorted TV shows. Then in January 2011, she was nominated for an Academy Award – up against Annette Bening, Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams – for her performance as a teen trying to negotiate a web of criminals in the Ozark Mountains to find her missing father in “Winter’s Bone.” Two months later, she landed the lead role in “The Hunger Games,” the first in a series of movies that is as highly anticipated as the first “Twilight” film had been. Anonymous no more. “It was fast, but I’m grateful for it,” says Lawrence, who spent four months in Asheville, Charlotte, Concord, and other parts of North Carolina last year during shooting. “When you get a promotion at your job, you don’t go, ‘God, that was too fast. Can I stay in the mailroom?’ You take it, thankfully. … I think I’m as ready as I can be – which is not that ready.” Getting into character In “The Hunger Games,” Lawrence portrays a 16-year-old girl named Katniss Everdeen, who lives with her mother and young sister in a future where a totalitarian government every year forces two dozen teens to fight to the death. Katniss’s sister is selected to participate, but Katniss steps in and volunteers to enter the battle in her place. Suzanne Collins’ 2008 book is written from Katniss’s point of view, and director Gary Ross has made a faithful adaptation; hence, Lawrence is in almost every scene of the 140-minute film. So she submitted to six weeks of pre-production training that included running, climbing, combat, archery and yoga; suffered through a heat wave while shooting in Shelby last spring; and almost every day for two months last summer, she trudged to remote forest locations near Asheville that were overrun by bears and wild turkeys. Ultimately – as evidenced by the film – Lawrence turned in an astonishing piece of acting, not unlike her breakthrough turn in “Winter’s Bone”: Early on, she is brittle and naïve, but as she develops a better understanding of the stakes and of her own personal ethics, she exudes a raw, realistic resolve that is reminiscent of a young Jodie Foster (who, coincidentally, Lawrence worked with in 2011’s “The Beaver”). ‘How does she do that?’ Ross – an Oscar nominee for writing “Seabiscuit,” “Pleasantville” and “Dave” – calls Lawrence “peerless in her generation.” “I think you see this once every 10 years, someone who comes along with this kind of talent, these sorts of chops, control over what she’s doing, the subtlety she has … at 21 years old, I don’t even understand it,” he says. ““Honest to God, I’m directing this girl and I’m in awe of it a lot of the time. I’ll just go, ‘Damn, how does she do that at her age?’ ” Lawrence reportedly beat out dozens of actresses for the coveted role of Katniss, star of Collins’ bestselling books (there are two sequels, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay”). Thanks to the new movie (and the inevitable follow-ups), Katniss’s – and therefore Lawrence’s – fan base will continue to swell over the next few years. On one level, the actress is really just happy to be here, as the saying goes. “I’ve been thinking about how this movie would affect people and young girls, but I haven’t actually thought about how it would affect me,” says Lawrence, a Louisville native who has never had an acting lesson. “I guess when I think about the positives, it’s just I get to be this character. … When I drive by the posters, I laugh, and once in awhile I’ll get goose bumps.” Looking beyond Katniss She is already trying to prove she can do more, though. In September, Lawrence will star in a horror movie with Elisabeth Shue titled “House at the End of the Street”; then in November, she’ll play a sex addict in “The Silver Linings Playbook,” a comedy also featuring Robert De Niro. And this spring, Lawrence will begin shooting a drama based on Western Carolina University professor Ron Rash’s 2008 novel “Serena.” While this new project will put Lawrence in a familiar setting – the N.C. mountains (during the Depression) – the title character in “Serena” is ice-cold and calculating, a departure from the sympathetic characters she often plays. “I hope that I can do movies and I’m not Katniss anymore,” Lawrence says, “that people can watch my movies and not think, ‘Oh look, Katniss is doing a period drama,’ ‘Katniss is doing this.’ I hope that when I’m doing these movies I can be the best Katniss that I can be, and then I can leave them and do other work.”