Jennifer Lawrence has gone a bit Howard Hughes. "I've started cleaning obsessively," she says. "I wake up early and start scrubbing my house. At first I thought, 'Oh, I'm just in a clean mood', but then I was like, 'No, I'm losing my mind!'"

An Academy Award nominee at 20, the Kentucky-born actor is now set for mainstream success with The Hunger Games, a cinematic adaptation of Suzanne Collins's hugely popular "young adult" novel. Given she's enjoying what she describes as "the anxiety of getting my life turned upside-down", obsessive cleaning might seem to be quite a tame response.

Set in a dystopian post-America now known as Panem, where an elite preside over a starving, benighted working class, The Hunger Games centres around a brutal televised tournament where randomly selected teens, referred to as "tributes", are whisked away to battle to the death for the enjoyment of their oppressors. A grim premise, perhaps, but also the sort of subject matter that the hallowed YA demographic can't seem to get enough of. A cautious sales estimate puts the number of copies sold at around 26m for the first novel alone, earning it a three-year residency on the New York Times bestseller list. Indeed, so profound has been the book's impact on the YA industry that a slew of copycat works have followed, with publishers maintaining that "dystopia" is the new "vampire".

All of which, predictably, has got Hollywood in a bit of a tizzy. Lionsgate quickly acquired distribution rights for adaptations of all three novels in 2009 and is hoping for Twilight levels of success. Lawrence, co-stars Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, and a supporting cast that includes Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks and Woody Harrelson have signed up for a quadrilogy of films, the first of which hit screens this week. Tickets for the opening weekend showings went on sale in January in the US and promptly broke existing pre-sale records. Indeed, some industry types consider it a dark horse for highest grossing film of 2012.

Lawrence plays resourceful heroine Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers as a tribute in order to spare her younger sister Prim. Hailing from Panem's impoverished District 12, Katniss isn't expected to last long in the arena, but her prodigious hunting skills, developed during an adolescence spent fending for her family, and her grim-faced determination to survive prove invaluable. "She's a warrior," is Lawrence's more succinct take on the character. "She's this hero that doesn't mean to be a hero. She's a symbol of revolt, and freedom, and hope … a futuristic Joan of Arc."

In an audition group that included Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Chloë Moretz (Kick Ass), Lawrence was, said Collins, "the only one who truly captured the character [of Katniss]". Gary Ross, the film's director, describes her as a "once in a lifetime" talent, comparing her performance to watching "[World Footballer of the Year Lionel] Messi play for the first time".

'It's about a government that has control over its people by keeping them separated and hungry and weak so that they can't fight back'

High praise but, as those who witnessed her impressive performance in 2010's bleak indie drama Winter's Bone will attest, hardly unjustified. Lawrence earned herself an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of pugnacious 17-year-old Ree, who is forced to provide for her catatonic mother and younger siblings in the absence of her meth-addict father. The similarities with Katniss are striking: both characters have been dragged into adulthood prematurely, and both have developed a survivalist instinct in order to cope.

"I do seem to do that character a lot," Lawrence, who also played Mystique in X-Men: First Class, concedes. "I did a movie when I was 17 called The Burning Plain and it was the same thing: me caring for my younger siblings and having to be an adult at such a young age. I don't know what it is. I think that when I get older I'll look back and understand it, but right now I go [adopts mock-stupid voice], 'Well, that's a weird coincidence.' Right now I don't get it."

Lawrence first read The Hunger Games at the recommendation of her mother, and found herself drawn to Katniss's hard-wired mental toughness. "[Katniss] can't afford to have crushes or anything like we would," she says. "She just has to survive." Sometimes that singularity of purpose comes off as cold or uncaring. One telling moment in the film has Peeta, District 12's other tribute, who is played by Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right), baring his soul to Katniss on the eve of the games. "If I'm going to die, I want to still be me," he says glumly, only for her to bluntly reply, "I just can't afford to think like that."

Collins came up with the idea for The Hunger Games while idly flicking between a televised talent contest and footage of the Iraq war, and a fierce, if somewhat crude, critique of reality TV informs both the book and the film. Easily digestible highlights packages of the tournament's many deaths are constructed for the viewers at home, turning the adolescent fighters into personalities for the television audience to side with. Prior to entering the arena, tributes are planted in front of hyper-charismatic talkshow host Caesar Flickerman, played by Stanley Tucci, for a candid, pre-bloodbath interview. Flickerman functions as the grotesque face of the elite, with bright blue hair and a face misshapen by frequent visits to the plastic surgeon. He pals around with the contestants but, says Tucci, is complicit in the savagery that follows. "He's a kind of Leni Riefenstahl figure of that world. He can say, 'I was never really a member of the party', but … no.

"It's like being a talkshow host for snuff films," he adds. "He's the restoration fop; he's one of those judges in Hitler's Germany who used to give melodramatic speeches in court. It's terrifying."

Tucci isn't the only cast member who finds parallels between real-life dictatorships and the regime ruling Panem. Elizabeth Banks, who plays trainer and former games victor Effie Trinket, also goes for the Hitler angle, likening her character to a "Jewish doctor in the early days of Nazi Germany", while Donald Sutherland, cast as the dastardly President Snow, has alluded to the current situation in Iran. Such comparisons seem a bit highfalutin for what is ultimately a teen-friendly action flick, but Lawrence insists that real-world analogies are legitimate. "It's about a government that has control over its people by keeping them separated and hungry and weak so that they can't fight back," she says, "which is completely real in so many countries. Fortunately in this story the people become angry enough to fight back."

'When I get asked: What are the differences between Twilight and The Hunger Games? I'm like: Erm, what are the similarities?'

Of course, the idea of a totalitarian government suppressing dissent through a good old death match is something of a cinematic staple, from The Running Man to Series 7: The Contenders, and some have already dismissed The Hunger Games as a watered-down Battle Royale. Yet, while the source material isn't quite as sanguinary as its Japanese cousin, there are certainly enough stabbings, bludgeonings and deaths to mean that making a loyal adaptation that the core fanbase could actually go and watch was something of a challenge. Cuts were forced on the film-makers in order to achieve a 12A rating in the UK, with "blood splashes" digitally removed. Lawrence, though, is adamant that the film reflects the brutality of the book. "In being aware of the [US] PG13 rating, we actually made our violence stronger and more realistic," she argues. "Someone gets their neck snapped and they're dead, someone gets an arrow in their back and they're dead. It's there and it's shocking, but we're not amping everything up, you know … 'Oh, look how cool this is, he's got a knife in his neck.'"

Another comparison point, unsurprisingly, is Twilight. Lawrence, who auditioned for the part of Bella in that film, bristles at the comparison. "When I get asked, 'What are the differences between Twilight and The Hunger Games?' I'm like, 'Erm, what are the similarities?'" she shrugs. "Both the content and the story are completely different."

Which isn't to say that The Hunger Games hasn't picked up a few tricks from its fanged forebear. Lawrence, Hutcherson and Hemsworth have recently completed a mall tour similar to that embarked upon by Robert Pattinson and co, while the soundtrack manages that same balance of muso cred (Arcade Fire, Olafur Arnalds, Steve Reich) and pop nous (Taylor Swift). Most significantly, a similar breakneck-speed filming model has been adopted, in order to allow the sequels to slot seamlessly into the space vacated by Twilight.

Lawrence compares the swift production period of the first film to working on an indie, and is keen for the sequels to follow the same model. "I very much like the style of indies," she smiles. "You get in, you work your ass off, you get out of there, rather than the style of 'We're All On Vacation And We Happen To Be Shooting A Movie'."