Jennifer Lawrence discusses being blue as young Mystique in X-Men: First Class

The large roster of mutants in Matthew Vaughn’s prequel X-MEN: FIRST CLASS may not exactly be filled with familiar faces, but we’ve got word from an actress playing a character we’ve seen — in more faces than one.

Hollywood Elsewhere chatted with up-and-comer Jennifer Lawrence (WINTER’S BONE), who is playing the young version of blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique. And from the sound of it, the character will spend much of the movie wearing various disguises — the actress says that only around 10% of her screen time will be in the original blue packaging, and the process takes about six hours to apply (Rebecca Romijn spent up to 8 hours becoming the sexy adult version).

Lawrence also claims the studio is holding on to photos of her character’s “true” form until closer to the movie’s June 2011 release, although something is bound to sneak onto the internet before then…

The movie goes back to when mutant telepath Charles Xavier first meets magnetism master Erik Lehnsherr, and they work together finding and training young mutants. Their “class” includes Beast, Havok, Banshee, Mystique, Angel (not the male winged version) and Darwin, who will face off against the evil Hellfire Club. (No Cyclops or Jean Grey.)