Jennifer Lawrence told Joanna Lumley to punch her

21 February 2018

Jennifer Lawrence has offered to let Joanna Lumley "punch" her in the face.

Jennifer Lawrence

The 'Red Sparrow' actress was branded rude for the way she brushed off compliments from the BAFTA Awards host when she was introduced to the stage at London's Royal Albert Hall on Sunday (18.02.18) and she came up with an unusual olive branch to reconcile the situation.

However, Joanna had no idea there had been any controversy over their exchange.

Jennifer said: "I emailed [Joanna] and said to her if you want to come over to my hotel and punch me in the face before we go to lunch that's fine.

"But she said I have no idea what you're talking about, I don't go on the internet."

And the 27-year-old actress is still stunned that a private "joke" between herself and the 71-year-old star led to her offending so many people.

Speaking on UK TV show 'Lorraine', she said: "I love Joanna Lumley, when I saw her, I grabbed her and was like I love you, big me up on stage.

"Then she said these lovely things about me and as a joke I was like, calm down. Boy did that go wrong.

"I was at the BAFTAs for 15 minutes and offended England."

Joanna introduced Jennifer to the stage by describing her as "the hottest actress on the planet" and calling her "ravishing", and the 'Silver Linings Playbook' star recently admitted she had told the screen icon what to say - and insisted it would have looked worse if she'd agreed with all the compliments.

She said: "I want to clear it up. OK, so backstage Joanna and I were both about to go out ... and I was like, 'Just [say] adjective after adjective, 'tall', 'beautiful', just say that I'm this and that. And she was like, 'Alright darling'.

"It was an inside joke. She went on and said all these really nice things about me and when I got up to the podium, I was like, 'That was a bit much', after I spent all of backstage telling her how to be really nice to me.

"Then everybody thought that I was being rude. But to be fair, I couldn't have just walked out after she [described me as] 'the biggest movie star in the world' and gone 'thank you, Joanna'. That would have been like, 'So you agree, you think you're really pretty'.

"I wasn't being rude, it was an inside joke."