Discovering Jennifer Lawrence’s Family: Meet Her Brothers, Ben and Blaine Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence and her brothers, Ben and Blaine, at the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Photo:

Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Jennifer Lawrence is close to her family, especially her brothers Ben and Blaine.

The siblings grew up in Louisville, Ky., raised by their mom, Karen, who ran a kids’ day camp, and their dad, Gary, who owned a construction company.

As the youngest of the three siblings, Jennifer was raised like her brothers and they were playfully contentious with one another, she explained on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2018. Still, Ben and Blaine were on board when The Hunger Games star decided to leave home to pursue acting at age 14.

In a bid to convince their parents, Ben and Blaine referred to the support they received for their baseball games and sports pursuits — and hoped Jennifer would get the same treatment.

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“Our friends thought we were nuts. We thought we were nuts. But [Jennifer's] brothers told us, ‘This is her baseball diamond. You've gotta let her play,’ ” Karen told Rolling Stone in 2012, who moved to New York City with the aspiring actress.

Since then, her family has continued to cheer her on as she's received recognition for both her breakout and blockbuster roles — often attending movie premieres and red carpet events with her.

But Ben told the New York Daily News in 2013 that although Jennifer’s fame was growing, she was the same “Lousivillian” at heart, and that’s what makes her relatable. “She is that person who you see on TV when she is not acting,” he said. “She is real.”

Here's everything to know about Jennifer Lawrence’s brothers, Ben and Blaine Lawrence.

Jennifer and her brothers grew up in Kentucky

Jennifer, Ben and Blaine grew up in Louisville, Ky. — and the three siblings were involved in antics.

Speaking on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2018, Jennifer said she has an “amazing relationship” with her older siblings because they’re decidedly not polite with each other, elaborating that her brothers, at one point, threw a remote and a thermos at her head.

“I just can’t imagine ever being in a family where you’re not like ‘get off me a——!’ ” she shared.

Although Ben and Blaine taunted and teased her, the American Hustle star explained that they still had a close relationship.

“We’re all awful in our own ways and wonderful in our own ways,” she added. “There’s a million things they hate about me. They cannot stand to hear me tell a story.”

Despite their differences, her brothers helped her, too. “The oldest one, he was pretty chill. He taught me how to drive stick,” she said, referring to Ben.

Jennifer added that he also stayed with her in N.Y.C. when she first started auditioning while her parents ran the family’s day camp. “My brother came out with me — but he was 18 — and we were both like ‘we’re gonna die!’ ” she recounted.

Blaine runs the family’s day camp

While Jennifer found her career in Hollywood, Blaine followed in his parents' footsteps.

Jennifer and her brothers grew up going to their family’s day camp, Camp Hi-Ho, which their mother founded in the 1980s. The siblings helped Karen and Gary run it until Jennifer’s career took off, and her brother Blaine eventually became the owner and director.

According to the camp’s website, campers 4 to 12 years old can take part in over two dozen activities that range from riding canoes to jumping on water trampolines, fishing and swimming, doing arts and crafts, zip-lining and petting animals in the barn.

In the fall of 2020, part of the camp burned down in a fire — resulting in the loss of a barn that included office space, horse stalls and an indoor rock wall, among other things, according to a Facebook post.

A few days later, Jennifer thanked the Louisville community for supporting her family and the camp during their loss.

“I grew up on that farm, going to Camp Hi-Ho every summer. When my brother Blaine took it over, he applied his creative mind and fun loving spirit and expanded a camp that was already the coolest,” she said in a statement to PEOPLE.

The actress continued, “My family and I are working together to help Blaine through this. And we are so grateful for the widespread support from the community to get Camp Hi-Ho back up and running.”

According to the camp’s Instagram, they were able to withstand the difficulties of COVID-19 and the fire and reopened for the 2021 summer.

Ben works in tech

Jennifer and her siblings all took vastly different career paths: While Blaine runs Camp Hi-Ho, Ben works in tech as a managing partner for Louisville Geek, an IT services company, where he oversees the marketing department, per his LinkedIn.

In 2013, Jennifer made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman and talked about her brother, who was watching from backstage. Host David Letterman knew Ben was with her and asked the Silver Linings Playbook actress what he did for a living.

“God, I don’t know,” she quipped. “It’s something with computers. … It’s something called Louisville Geek I think. I think he goes to an office?”

Jokes aside, Jennifer shared how close she and her brother are. “We talk all the time. I just never ask any questions!” she said.

They support her career

Jennifer’s siblings often encourage her career by attending awards shows, interviews and movie premieres with her — including for the 2012 release of The Hunger Games, among other events.

In 2011, Ben, Blaine and their parents went to the Oscars, where Jennifer received a Best Actress nomination for her role in Winter’s Bone.

The following year, Vulture shared a photo of Jennifer and her family celebrating her nomination for the movie. The black-and-white picture shows the actress, her mother, father, Blaine and her then-boyfriend Nicholas Hoult cheering in excitement.

Two years later, the whole family attended the Oscars again, when Jennifer won the award for Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook — and famously fell up the stairs.

Ben later told the New York Daily News about their collective Oscars experience. “We took turns sitting up front with her,” he said. “I sat with her for 45 minutes. Then Blaine, my brother, then my dad, then my mom.”

She was a bridesmaid in Ben and Blaine's weddings

In 2014, Jennifer appeared on the cover of Martha Stewart Weddings as a bridesmaid in Blaine and his wife Carson’s wedding. Photos of the celebration in Goshen, Ky., featured in the magazine, showed Jennifer and the other bridesmaids wearing ivory J. Crew dresses and Ben’s 2-year-old son as the ring bearer.

A few years before, in 2010, Jennifer was also a bridesmaid in Ben’s wedding to his wife Meredith. The two married in Kentucky on the historic Locust Grove estate, per the wedding blog Grey Likes Weddings.

After being a bridesmaid in both of her brothers’ weddings, as well as for multiple friends, Jennifer told Vanity Fair in 2016 that she was done with the role.

“Weddings rock, but I will never be a bridesmaid again,” she told the outlet. “If anyone asks me again, I’m going to say, ‘No. That part of my life is over. I appreciate the ask.’ ”

In 2019, though, Jennifer was finally a bride, not a bridesmaid, at her own wedding to Cooke Maroney.

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She’s close with her brothers' kids

Ben and Blaine both have children, and Jennifer has “lots of nephews [and] one niece" who live in Kentucky, she said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2018.

According to their Facebook pages, Ben and his wife Meredith have three kids, while Blaine and Carson have two children, per their social media accounts.

In 2011, she shared a story about her nephew Bear — Ben’s son, whose full name is David Lawrence, nicknamed “Bear” — on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon while promoting her role in X-Men: Apocalypse.

She told host Jimmy Fallon that when he was 4 years old, Bear was “obsessed” with X-Men but refused to acknowledge that she played Mystique in the movies. “I’m like, ‘Bear, I’m in X-Men,’ ” she recalled. “And he goes, ‘No, the real X-Men.’ ”

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Two of Jennifer’s nephews were also in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. Ben’s son Bear and Blaine’s son Theo, who was only 9 months old at the time of filming, appeared in the final epilogue scene of the movie, according to Yahoo Entertainment.

The movie’s director, Francis Lawrence, told the publication that Ben was playing in the field with Josh Hutcherson’s character, Peeta, and Theo was in Jennifer’s arms in the scene.

When speaking to Collider in 2015, Jennifer talked about filming the shot her nephews. First, they wrapped the majority of the movie in Berlin, then “I had a last scene, about a year later, with my nephews, which was so special,” she told the outlet.

Jennifer added, “They played my children in the scene that I shot. It was amazing closure to this character who I’ve loved for so many years, and I had my blood family there.”