About Brie Larson
Known for her supporting roles in comedies as a teenager, she has since expanded to leading roles in independent films and blockbusters. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
At age six, 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. She appeared as a regular in the 2001 sitcom Raising Dad and briefly dabbled with a music career, releasing the album Finally Out of P.E. in 2005. She subsequently had supporting roles in the comedy films Hoot (2006), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), and 21 Jump Street (2012), and appeared as a sardonic teenager in the television series United States of Tara (2009–2011).
Her breakthrough came with a leading role in the acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12 (2013), and she continued to take on supporting parts in the romance The Spectacular Now (2013) and the comedy Trainwreck (2015). For playing a kidnapping victim in the drama Room (2015), she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The 2017 adventure film Kong: Skull Island marked her first big-budget release, after which she starred as Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Captain Marvel (2019). Larson has since starred in the miniseries Lessons in Chemistry (2023).
Larson has co-written and co-directed two short films, and made her feature film directorial debut with the independent comedy-drama Unicorn Store (2017). For producing the virtual reality series The Messy Truth VR Experience (2020), she won a Primetime Emmy Award. A gender equality activist and an advocate for sexual assault survivors, Larson is vocal about social and political issues.
Early Life
Larson was born in Sacramento, California to Heather (née Edwards) and Sylvain Desaulniers,homeopathic chiropractors who ran a practice together. They have another daughter, Milaine.Her father is Franco-Manitoban; French was Larson's first language.She holds dual citizenship of Canada and the United States.She was mostly home-schooled, which she believed allowed her to explore innovative and abstract experiences.Describing her early life, Larson has said she was "straight-laced and square", and that she shared a close bond with her mother but was shy and had social anxiety.During the summer, she wrote and directed her own home movies in which she cast her cousins, filmed in her garage.At age six, she expressed interest in becoming an actress, later remarking that the "creative arts was just something that was always in me".That same year, she auditioned for a training program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she became its youngest student.She has said she wanted to become an actress after watching Jennifer Lopez in Selena (1997).
Larson's parents divorced when she was aged seven.She had a dysfunctional relationship with her father, saying: "As a kid I tried to understand him and understand the situation. But he didn't do himself any favors. I don't think he ever really wanted to be a parent."Soon after their separation, Heather relocated to Los Angeles with her two daughters to fulfill Larson's acting ambition. They had limited financial means and lived in a small apartment near Hollywood studio lots at Burbank.Larson described the experience, "We had a crappy one-room apartment where the bed came out of the wall and we each had three articles of clothing."Even so, she has recounted fond memories of this period and credits her mother for doing the best she could for them.
As her last name was difficult to pronounce, she adopted the stage name Larson from her Swedish great-grandmother, as well as an American Girl doll named Kirsten Larson that she received as a child.Her first job was performing a commercial parody for Barbie, named "Malibu Mudslide Barbie", in a 1998 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.She subsequently took on guest roles in several television series, including Touched by an Angel and Popular.In 2000, she was cast in the Fox sitcom Schimmel, which was canceled before airing when its star, Robert Schimmel, was diagnosed with cancer.
Personal Life & Media Image
Larson is reticent to discuss her personal life, and refuses in interviews to answer questions that make her uncomfortable.On her desire to be private, she has said she fears being judged for her flaws, and that the privacy allows her to play a wide variety of roles without being typecast.
Larson began dating Alex Greenwald, lead singer of the band Phantom Planet, in 2013; they were engaged from 2016 to 2019.They had lived together in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.She credited Greenwald for creating a safe space for her and for empowering her to take risks in her work.Since 2019, Larson was in a relationship with actor-filmmaker Elijah Allan-Blitz.In 2023, she stated that she was single, indicating that she and Allan-Blitz had broken-up.
Describing Larson's off-screen persona, Holly Millea of Elle wrote in 2016 that she "carries herself like an athlete, lean and solid, surefooted [and] yet her energy is warm and familial, literally embracing".The writer Anne Helen Petersen finds her to be "incredibly warm" and adds that she is "a serious nerd, with the endlessly tunneling knowledge of a homeschooler".Jennifer Dickison of Porter states that Larson's "fully formed" personality made it difficult to categorize her into a conventional slot.
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".She is drawn to roles that differ from her own personality and which involve themes of social activism.Fan Zhong of W magazine has identified a theme of "sex appeal, inner torment, and a quick, playful wit" in her characters.Lenny Abrahamson, who directed Larson in Room, believes that her craft has "none of that showy intensity that sometimes gets all the attention" and has said that her "awareness of tougher lives" empowers her performances.Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed her in Short Term 12 and The Glass Castle, has praised her ability to improvise, stating, "I never know what's going to happen, and often she doesn't know what's going to happen."
Larson maintains an active social media presence and uses it as a platform to share opinions and posts that she writes herself.In 2020, she started her own YouTube channel.She also hosted a podcast named Learning Lots alongside actress Jessie Ennis.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.In 2018, she was named among the best American actors under 30 by IndieWire.In 2019, Madame Tussauds New York unveiled a wax statue of Larson as Captain Marvel.In the same year, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Acting Credits & Awards
According to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and the box-office site Box Office Mojo, Larson's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful films are Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), 21 Jump Street (2012), Short Term 12 (2013), Don Jon (2013), The Spectacular Now (2013), Trainwreck (2015), Room (2015), Kong: Skull Island (2017), Captain Marvel (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Fast X (2023).
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.She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program for producing the virtual reality series The Messy Truth VR Experience (2020).
As of March 2024, she has amassed 7.1 million followers on Instagram and 666,000 subscribers on her YouTube platform.
