She made headlines for all the wrong reasons yesterday when fans slated her for appearing to snub Joanna Lumley's glowing introduction at the BAFTAs - but now Jennifer Lawrence has said that it was all part of a private joke.

The actress was being interviewed by Ronan Keating for his Magic FM show when the Boyzone singer asked her to clear up the 'rude' controversy. Lumley had introduced her as 'the hottest actress on the planet', although when she took to the stage she dismissively said 'That was a bit much Joanna, but thank you.'

"So, behind the stage - or backstage - Joanna and I are both about to go out and she was gonna present me," she said. "And I was like [encouraging her to use] just adjective after adjective: just 'tall', 'beautiful', 'just say that I'm this and that', and she was like 'Alright, darling', and she goes on stage.

"So it was an inside joke. She went on and said all these really nice things about me and then when I got up to the podium, I was like 'That was a bit much' - after I just spent all backstage telling her how to be really nice to me."

She added: "And then everybody thought that I was being rude. But to be fair, I couldn't have just walked out after she was like, 'Biggest movie star in the world!' and I'd just walked out and gone 'Thank you Joanna'. It would have been like, 'So you agree? You think you're really pretty?'

"I wasn't being rude, it was an inside joke, I mean I'm always rude but..."

Watch it below: