When Jennifer Lawrence was offered a screenplay about a wounded US Army engineer who returns from Afghanistan into a strained relationship with her mother, she was on hiatus from acting and not yet a mother.

The Oscar-winning ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ star, 32, whose fame had skyrocketed since the hugely popular ‘Hunger Games’ movies, was an almost ubiquitous presence with a prolific string of films before announcing a hiatus because “everyone fed me up.”

But when she read a script for Causeway — then titled Red, White, and Water — something changed.

“It was really just a gut feeling, just like that urgency,” she told AFP at the Toronto Film Festival.

“I was very clear that I didn’t want to work, and then it kind of ended up on my desk, and I just had this sense of urgency, like, ‘let’s make it, let’s do this.'”

The subtle, character-driven indie film – which also became the first project for Lawrence’s fledgling production company – follows military engineer Lynsey’s return to her mother’s home in New Orleans.

A debilitating brain injury following an IED blast in Afghanistan isn’t the only trauma she must overcome as issues from her childhood and family life surface.

Lawrence chose the film in part to show “what these heroes go through to protect us.”

“It was wonderful to be able to speak to the amazing men and women who served to try and get more information and background,” she said on the red carpet of the film’s world premiere on Saturday.

But for the role in Causeway, in which Lynsey has a troubled relationship with her unreliable mother, she also drew in part on her own childhood.

“I had complications growing up, just like everyone else – so it was more of a way of clearing that up,” she said of the film, which began filming in 2019 before being put on hold by the pandemic and eventually picking up again in 2021 became.

During this delay, Lawrence also directed and promoted the doomsday comedy Don’t Look Up.

And she’s since become a mother herself, giving birth to son Cy earlier this year.

“Oh god, everything changes after you become a mother!” She told AFP.

“How am I making his life difficult? I don’t know yet,” she joked.

The film sees Lynsey form an unlikely friendship with James, played by Brian Tyree Henry, an auto repairman who fixes her truck when it breaks down.

Although both grew up in New Orleans, their backgrounds are very different.

But he too has family trauma buried deep in his past that binds the two in a relationship that soon becomes the emotional anchor of the film.

“This film is an excavation of how we start to process, how we deal with it, how we actually change, how we start to reconnect,” said director Lila Neugebauer, who made her film debut after hitting Broadway.

“Both Jen and Brian have such a deep connection to their characters in this film, as actors and as people.”

For Lawrence, there was “something about this woman who has been through so much and is suffering from this invisible injury and is trying to rebuild her home and her place.”

“There was something that connected me deeply,” she said.

Causeway is out November 4 in select theaters and on Apple TV+. The Toronto International Film Festival runs until September 18th.