Jennifer Lawrence grew up in a nice middle-class home in Louisville, not a Missouri cabin surrounded by meth cookers.

But she says she had no problem identifying with Ree Dolly, the Ozarks teen she plays in Winter's Bone, which opened Friday at The Kentucky Theatre.

"Ree is incredibly stubborn, and she's maternal ... and loyal," Lawrence, 19, said in a phone call from Los Angeles. "Those are three of my biggest traits.

"Plus, I grew up in Louisville, so I know something about the South, about that way of thinking. So it wasn't hard for me to meet these people in southern Missouri and get the hang of their talk."

Lawrence is best known for her three-year run as a sitcom suburban teen on TBS's The Bill Engvall Show, but her film choices have been anything but lighthearted.

In The Poker House, she played a girl growing up in a brothel; the character was raped by her mother's boyfriend.

In The Burning Plain, she portrayed a defiant teen whose illicit love for a Mexican boy pushes the limits of her parents' tolerance.

And in the Sundance hit Winter's Bone, she plays a girl infiltrating the Ozarks drug trade to discover the fate of her meth-cooking father.

"It's not like I have a plan to appear only in dark movies," Lawrence said. "I go out and audition for lots of movies. ... I just happened to get those roles. It's as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I seem to have this gloomy monster living inside me.

"But I will tell you I loved those movies. They weren't crappy, like a lot of the stuff I read. And I understood the characters very well.

"I'm really picky about the projects I do. I don't really like stories that don't take you anywhere. That's what a film is — it's a journey. I ask myself, 'What is this character like at the beginning and what must I do to get her to the end?'"

She might look like the fresh-scrubbed girl next door, but Lawrence is no pushover. At 14, she announced to her family that she was going to be an actress.

Her parents — who had no experience with show business — finally gave in on the condition that after moving to New York City with her mother, Lawrence would get her GED with a 3.9 grade-point average.

"I schooled myself. I had the time because for a long period I sucked because I didn't know what I was doing. My mom would wake me up early, anyway. She'd say, 'This isn't a vacation. You're still in school.'

"It was the most miserable two years of my life. But then I started getting work — a few commercials, small parts on Medium and Cold Case."

Three years ago, Lawrence, who describes herself as "a black sheep," declared herself ready to go it alone.

"I thanked my parents for raising me and told them I'd take it from there. But we never stopped being a family, and they never stopped being parents.

"My mom worries about everything. When I have a night shoot, she'll text me: 'Can someone follow you home?' With my dad it's always, 'Be sure to lock your garage.' It'll probably still be that way when I'm married and have a family."

The source of her fierce independent streak?

"I grew up around lots of boys. I've got two older brothers, but we're such a big family that there were never only two boys in the house. Lots of cousins and friends. We always had a football team over for dinner. That made me very competitive.

"If I see someone's fork being waved in the direction of my plate, I eat really, really fast, almost as if the food was about to disappear. Because when I was a kid, it would disappear. I still eat fast because I'm afraid somebody will steal it off my plate."

Lawrence has received rave reviews for Winter's Bone. She even finds herself being recognized in public.

"Problem is, I'm usually recognized when I'm doing something embarrassing. In a store, I knocked over a display of like 300 necklaces. I'm screaming, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' And as soon as I start walking away someone says, 'Aren't you Jennifer Lawrence?'"

A somewhat happier encounter took place at a studio, where the actress's path crossed that of director Steven Spielberg.

"He opened a door for me, then looks at me and says, 'Aren't you Jennifer Lawrence? Didn't I just see you in Winter's Bone?'

"I practically passed out. I talked with him for, like, 20 minutes. Then I got in my car and started crying because I didn't know what else to do.

"So I called my mom, who was in town. She said, 'That's great, Jen. What do you want for dinner?'"

Lawrence has never had an acting lesson.

"I can't explain how I do what I do — it's all instinctive. I don't do research. I just read the script and let the sets and costumes sink in. I've never wanted to go to acting classes because I don't want to learn how to act. I'd rather just be.

"Besides, why fix something that isn't broken?"