Have you ever met Jennifer Lawrence? What was she like in person?

LOS ANGELES — “I picture myself drowning.”

Jennifer Lawrence swallowed hard and continued. “I picture myself drowning. Outwardly, I look like I’m having a blast, and I am, at least on some levels. There I was — burp, burp, burp — just a little gal from Kentucky getting discovered by big ol’ Hollywood. But inside I’m terrified. In an instant — boom — everyone’s listening, everyone’s looking.”

Ms. Lawrence, 25, was trying to remember the even younger woman she was in the fall of 2011, as the promotional campaign for the first “Hunger Games” movie began. The attention was not entirely new; she attended the 2011 Academy Awards as a best actress nominee, for the gritty indie “Winter’s Bone.” But that experience was nothing compared with the scrutiny that arrived when she signed on to play Katniss Everdeen, the reluctant fighter at the center of the “Hunger Games” series.