73 Facts About Brie Larson

1.

At age six, Brie Larson was the youngest student admitted to a training program at the American Conservatory Theater, and she began her acting career in 1998 with a comedy sketch on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

2.

Brie Larson subsequently played supporting roles in the comedy films Hoot, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and 21 Jump Street, and appeared as a sardonic teenager in the television series United States of Tara.

3.

Brie Larson's breakthrough came with a leading role in the acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12, and she continued to take on supporting parts in the romance The Spectacular Now and the comedy Trainwreck.

4.

For playing a kidnapping victim in the drama Room, Brie Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

5.

Brie Larson has co-written and co-directed two short films, and made her feature film directorial debut with the independent comedy-drama Unicorn Store.

6.

Brie Larson's parents were homeopathic chiropractors who ran a practice together.

7.

Brie Larson's father is Franco-Manitoban; in her childhood, French was Larson's first language.

8.

Brie Larson holds dual citizenship of Canada and the United States.

9.

Brie Larson was mostly home-schooled, which she believed allowed her to explore innovative and abstract experiences.

10.

Brie Larson experienced trauma at age seven due to her parents' divorce.

11.

Brie Larson subsequently took on guest roles in several television series, including Touched by an Angel and Popular.

12.

Brie Larson developed an interest in music at age eleven when she learned to play the guitar.

13.

Brie Larson soon signed a record deal with Tommy Mottola of Casablanca Records; she and Lindsay Lohan were the only artists signed by the label at the time.

14.

Brie Larson titled it after a gym teacher she disliked and has said the songs she wrote were mostly about failed job opportunities.

15.

Brie Larson went on tour with Jesse McCartney for Teen Peoples "Rock in Shop" mall concerts, opened for him during his Beautiful Soul tour, and performed in New York City at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

16.

In 2006, Brie Larson was cast alongside Logan Lerman and Cody Linley in the comedy film Hoot, about young vigilantes trying to save a group of owls.

17.

Brie Larson had a small part, the following year, in the Amber Heard-starring drama Remember the Daze, and she launched an arts and literature magazine, Bunnies and Traps, for which she wrote her own opinion columns and accepted submissions from other artists and writers.

18.

Brie Larson has said she frequently considered quitting acting at that point, as she found it difficult to find much work, blaming it on filmmakers' inability to typecast her.

19.

Brie Larson was particularly discouraged when she lost out on key roles in the films Thirteen and Juno.

20.

In 2009, Brie Larson began playing Kate Gregson, the sardonic teenage daughter of Toni Collette's character, coping with her mother's dissociative identity disorder, in the Showtime comedy-drama series United States of Tara.

21.

Portia Doubleday was initially cast in the role but was replaced with Brie Larson after filming the pilot episode.

22.

Brie Larson has said that her character's journey to find meaning in life mirrored that of her own, and she was upset when the show was canceled after three seasons in 2011.

23.

At the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2010, Brie Larson appeared in a stage production of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.

24.

In 2012, Brie Larson expanded into filmmaking by co-writing and co-directing the short film The Arm with Jessie Ennis and Sarah Ramos.

25.

Brie Larson featured as a seductive teenager in the critically panned drama The Trouble with Bliss, after which she played Molly, a high school student, in 21 Jump Street, an adaptation of the 1980s police procedural television series, co-starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

26.

Brie Larson found her acting style to be more rigid than Hill's approach and was challenged by scenes that required her to improvise with him.

27.

Dana Stevens of Slate labeled Brie Larson "a find of major proportions", adding that "she's not only beautiful but funny, with a scratchy contralto voice, and unlike the usual female in a buddy movie, she comes across as a real person".

28.

Brie Larson's breakthrough came in the same year when she starred in Destin Daniel Cretton's critically acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12, which marked the first leading role of her career.

29.

Brie Larson received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead; she later remarked that the film prompted directors to offer her a wide variety of parts, but she turned down roles of the unidimensional love interest.

30.

Also in 2013, Brie Larson had supporting roles in two romantic dramas, Don Jon and The Spectacular Now.

31.

Brie Larson was drawn to the realism she found in the project's depiction of high school experiences.

32.

The director Rupert Wyatt felt the role was underwritten and cast Brie Larson to lend heft to it.

33.

Brie Larson next played the sister of Amy Schumer's character in the comedy Trainwreck, which was loosely based on Schumer's own life.

34.

Brie Larson modeled her role on Schumer's sister, who served as an associate producer on the film.

35.

Tim Grierson of Screen International labeled the film "a deft blend of laughs, romance and poignancy" and found Brie Larson to be "lively, [but] slightly underused".

36.

Brie Larson then starred in Room, a film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel of the same name.

37.

Brie Larson collaborated closely with co-star Jacob Tremblay, who played her son, and spent time performing activities that mirrored those of their characters.

38.

Brie Larson won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe and BAFTA in the same category.

39.

Brie Larson agreed to the project to call attention to gun violence.

40.

Eric Kohn of IndieWire noted how different Brie Larson's role was from that in Room and added that her "businesslike demeanor proves her ability to command a scene with a single glare".

41.

Brie Larson had filmed a part in Todd Solondz's comedy Wiener-Dog, but her scenes were deleted from the final cut as Solondz found her character inessential to the story.

42.

Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post praised the film's visual effects and remarked that "Brie Larson manages to hold her own with very little to do".

43.

Later in 2017, Brie Larson portrayed Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle, an adaptation of Walls' memoir, which reunited her with Destin Daniel Cretton.

44.

Brie Larson was drawn to the complex depiction of a parent-child relationship and identified with its theme of forgiveness.

45.

Brie Larson collaborated closely with Walls and her siblings and observed their mannerisms.

46.

Brie Larson played a disillusioned art student fascinated with unicorns.

47.

Brie Larson had unsuccessfully auditioned in 2012 to star in the film when Miguel Arteta was attached to direct.

48.

Brie Larson was drawn to the fanciful narrative and found a connection between her character's journey and her experience as a director.

49.

Brie Larson was initially skeptical about taking on such a high-profile role, but later accepted the part after viewing it as a platform to empower young women and found a connection with the character's flaws and humanity.

50.

Brie Larson reprised her role in Avengers: Endgame, which she had filmed before Captain Marvel.

51.

Also in 2019, Larson teamed with Destin Daniel Cretton for the third time in Just Mercy, based on Bryan Stevenson's memoir about death row inmate Walter McMillian's wrongful conviction, starring Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

52.

Brie Larson agreed to take on the supporting part of Eva Ansley, an advocate for the Equal Justice Initiative, to lend her support to Cretton's storytelling.

53.

In 2022, Brie Larson reprised her role as Captain Marvel for the Disneyland Paris theme park ride Avengers Assemble: Filght Force and the Disney Wish cruise ship ride Avengers: Quantum Encounter.

54.

Brie Larson created, directed and hosted the docuseries Growing Up and starred in the augmented reality short film Remembering.

55.

Brie Larson featured as the character Paradigm in the online video game Fortnite Battle Royale.

56.

At the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Brie Larson served as a jury member.

57.

In 2018, Brie Larson collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination.

58.

In 2014, Brie Larson teamed with Alia Penner to launch Women of Cinefamily, a monthly program to call attention to films directed by and starring women, for the nonprofit cinematheque Cinefamily, in which Brie Larson served as an advisory board member.

59.

Brie Larson joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016, and was later among the finalists for the organization's board of governors.

60.

At the 2018 Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards, where she was honored, Brie Larson bemoaned the lack of diversity among film reporters and called for better representation of minority voices in film criticism.

61.

Brie Larson announced a twenty-percent quota for underrepresented journalists at the Sundance and Toronto International Film Festivals.

62.

Brie Larson is reticent about her personal life and refuses in interviews to answer questions that make her uncomfortable.

63.

Brie Larson began dating Alex Greenwald, lead singer of the band Phantom Planet, in 2013, and they were engaged from 2016 to 2019.

64.

Brie Larson had credited Greenwald for creating a safe space for her and for empowering her to take risks in her work.

65.

Since 2019, Brie Larson was in a relationship with actor-filmmaker Elijah Allan-Blitz.

66.

Jennifer Dickison of Porter states that Brie Larson's "fully formed" personality made it difficult to categorize her into a conventional slot.

67.

Brie Larson has said she is interested in films that illustrate the "human condition" and which "make people feel more connected to themselves [and] the rest of the world".

68.

Brie Larson is drawn to roles that differ from her own personality and which involve themes of social activism.

69.

Brie Larson maintains an active social media presence and uses it as a platform to share opinions and posts that she writes herself.

70.

Brie Larson hosted a podcast named Learning Lots alongside actress Jessie Ennis.

71.

Brie Larson was featured by Forbes in their 30 Under 30 list of 2016 and was included by People in their annual beauty list in 2016 and 2019.

72.

Brie Larson has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a British Academy Film Award, among other accolades, for her performance in Room.

73.

Brie Larson won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program for producing the virtual reality series The Messy Truth VR Experience.