Jennifer Lawrence won the female actor in a leading role honor at Sunday night's 19th Screen Actors Guild Awards for playing a headstrong but mentally unstable young widow in "Silver Linings Playbook."

The 22-year-old Lawrence, who burst on the scene with 2010’s Sundance Film Festival sensation “Winter’s Bone,” for which she was nominated for the lead actress Oscar, beat out a cadre of more experienced performers for the SAG honor: “The Impossible’s” Naomi Watts, “Rust and Bone’s” Marion Cotillard, “Hitchcock’s” Helen Mirren and the presumed favorite, “Zero Dark Thirty’s” Jessica Chastain.

She was considered a bit of a longshot to play Tiffany, Bradley Cooper’s love interest in the film, as she is 15 years younger than the “Hangover” star. (Lawrence tried to fudge her youth during her Skype audition for “Silver Linings Playbook” by loading up on black eyeliner and mascara.)

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“She seems ageless to me,” said David O. Russell, who wrote and directed “Silver Linings Playbook.” "She's not neurotic. She's very comfortable in her own skin and has such a presence about her.”