Jennifer Lawrence sparks backlash by falsely claiming to be the first woman in the lead of an action movie

Jennifer Lawrence is sparking backlash after falsely claiming to be the first woman in the lead of an action movie.

Lawrence made the comments in a nearly 45-minute sit-down discussion with fellow actress and producer Viola Davis, published by Variety, in which they discussed acting, inequities within the industry and motherhood, among other topics.

In the discussion, Lawrence, 32, said of the significance of her role playing protagonist Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games": "I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead," she told Davis.

Lawrence went on to say "it just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every one of those beliefs, and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies."

Critics on social media quickly pounced on Lawrence's comments, noting that several other women have starred as leads in action films — including Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" films; Angelina Jolie in "Salt" and "Tomb Raider"; Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill: Volume 1" and "Kill Bill: Volume 2"; and Michelle Yeoh in several films, including "Supercop," "Magnificent Warriors" and “Yes, Madam!”

Variety appeared to delete a tweet it had posted promoting Lawrence's comments after several Twitter users noted the inaccuracy of her statement.

Others said while Lawrence's comment was technically incorrect, she accurately pointed to a larger issue of gender bias in Hollywood.

"It is untrue that no one had ever put a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games," Franklin Leonard, producer and founder of "The Black List," a platform for film and TV writers, said in a tweet. "It is absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against women driven action movies because of this ridiculous belief about who identifies with whom."

NBC News has reached out to Lawrence's representative for comment.

Davis and Lawrence's conversation comes on the heels of two recently released films in which they star as leads: "The Woman King," featuring Davis as the leader of an all-female West African warrior unit, and "Causeway," starring Lawrence as a U.S. soldier who returns home from Afghanistan after suffering a traumatic brain injury.